Gen13: Mystics
by Joshua The Evil Guy
Summary: Sequel to my stories "Harry Potter and Project Genesis" and "Gen13: Quarters". The Team's been in Sunnydale for a few months now, and the world hasn't ended. Trends like that don't tend to last. Issue 1: Among Friends And Enemies
1. Among Friends And Enemies

Title: Gen13: Mystics

Author: Joshua

Disclaimer: JK Rowling has Harry, and whoever else from the books show up in these plots. Gen13 and all associated characters and events were created by Jim Lee and J. Scott Campbell, and the original comics/events this story covers distributed by Image Comics, though are now owned by DC Comics. Same for the Coda. BtVS and all associated characters, in particularly "Sunnydale, CA", is owned by Joss Whedon and Mutant/Enemy Productions. I don't own either and I'm not making any money from all this, so don't bother suing me. Spoilers for first 10 or so issues of the original Gen13.v1 comics series.

Summary: Full Sequel of my stories "Harry Potter and Project Genesis" and "Gen13: Quarters". They've been in Sunnydale for a few months now, and the world hasn't ended. Trends like that don't tend to last.

Issue 01: _Among Friends And Enemies!_

 _Summary:_ Life is going good for the Gen13 Team. They train and prepare and enjoy the beach and the easy side of life. Until they come across a group of dimension-hopping demon mercs hunting a portal-making Fae.

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Sunnydale, CA_

 _June 1999_

"Harry's BACK!"

The shout echoed from the top of the multi-tiered geometric villa and throughout the house. Several ears perked up, but the majority of the occupants remained fixated upon their current tasks. For the singular individual that did care, well, she hurried to finish what she was doing before racing to greet their returning team member.

Robert "Bobby" Lane, aka _Burnout_ , being the one to have announced the return of their intrepid leader, instead went back to what he'd been doing before eyeballing Harry James Potter, aka _Thundercrack_ , walking up the path from the road to their front door. Which was playing his guitar.

Percival Edmund "Eddie" Chang, aka _Grunge_ , and his teenage girlfriend Roxanne "Roxy" Spaulding, aka _Freefall_ , didn't so much as take their eyes off the screen as they focused all their attention on kicking each others virtual butt in the video game they were playing. They did have enough awareness to shout out, "Hey Harry!" when they heard the front door open and shut.

In the privacy of her own room, Sarah Rainmaker, aka _Rainmaker_ , heard the shout, and sent a brief magical pulse of welcome through the building's wards. She was pleased to note she could feel the responding pulse as the young wizard crossed the threshold.

Getting up from her workstation, just off to the side of the living room, Caitlin "Kat" Fairchild, aka _Fairchild_ , quickly walked over to give her friend and teammate a welcome back hug. Being a perfectly normal heterosexual male, still waiting for his 19th birthday in fact, this was nothing he would dare say no to. Especially, seeing as he was a five-five, runners-build, dark-haired, green-eyed youth standing next to a six-foot-four, green-eyed, redheaded _amazon_ with the body and physique super-models would die for. Who _would_ say no to a hug from _that_?

"Welcome home, Harry," Caitlin said, smiling down at the skinny wizard. It may not have been just skin and bones, but the fact remained that despite being built and well-muscled now, Harry was as skinny as he ever was. "How was the trip?"

"I think you mean, mission, but, eh," the dark-haired wand wielder shrugged. "I handled it. How goes the training on this end? I'm perfectly willing to take the team with me on these missions from the ICW, but you have to be able to defend yourselves. Which means developing your mystical talents. Been practicing?"

Sighing, Caitlin acknowledged the fact that he'd already 'headed off' her argument about going with him next time, and instead answered his question.

"We were just taking a break," she answered. "I've been researching as much as I can to find authentic protection spells, and I practice the seven you taught me, and the others I've learned since almost daily. Roxy says she uses her divination powers almost constantly, if only to find where we all hide her cigarettes. Bobby and Rainmaker won't tell me what they're up to unless they need me to ward their practice area. And Grunge..." she trailed off, and shrugged helplessly. "Well... he's Grunge."

"And Lynch?" Harry asked, as they made their way up the stairs, removing his robes and various equipment with each step level.

"Daily training," Caitlin said. "Gives us one day off every week. Incidentally, today happens to be that day for this week. He'll probably want to give you the third degree, now that you're back. Been keeping up with your skills?"

"And getting new ones," Harry said, smiling. They had reached his room, and he was now down to his 'costume', which was basically what he wore as underwear whenever out on missions. He briefly considered teasing his—still somewhat innocent—friend, but decided it wouldn't be worth it. This time.

"Look, Kat," he said, "I'll tell you all about it. I promise. Just let me shower, change, get something to eat, and I'll meet you in the kitchen. We can talk about it over dinner. Or breakfast. Damn, changing time zones really does a number on keeping track of meals."

"Oh," Caitlin suddenly flushed, and looked down. "Right. Yes, of course. I'll, uh, I'll see you downstairs in the kitchen. Right." She then stood there for a beat, before abruptly about-facing and practically marching back down all three flights of stairs to the main kitchen and dining room area, where the team's live-in maid, house-keeper, and android bodyguard was busy preparing a virtual feast of, of, of... well, of English foods.

"I see you've prepared for Harry's return, Anna," the tall redhead remarked, taking a seat at the bar.

"It is my duty to see to the welfare of all you children," the shorter pixie-cut blond replied. "Even the rebellious ones that think they know better."

"Harry doesn't know everything, but he knows a lot more than you and Mister Lynch believe he does," Caitlin defended her friend.

Speaking of whom, he entered the room, now dressed quite casually in board shorts, beach slippers and a loose green t-shirt that matched his eyes. Caitlin couldn't help it when her eyes shot down and took in his muscular legs, and arms, and the quiet strength he somehow seemed to emanate from every one of his pores. When she saw she'd been caught, evidenced by the teasing smirk on his face, she ducked her head and blushed, remaining quiet. Meanwhile, Harry took in his own appreciation of his red-haired friend's attire, tight fitting skinny jeans, ankle socks, a sleeveless white t-shirt, and a blue knitted vest. All as comfortable as his own clothing, of course, but formfitting enough to allow her enhanced physique to shine through.

"Thanks Anna," Harry said, still speaking in his forced American accent, making Caitlin wonder why he hadn't relaxed and returned to his native English accent. "Looks great, as always. Best prep the dishwasher, all the same."

The blond android smiled demurely, but continued preparing the last of his 'welcome home' snack all the same. By the time that it was all finished, Harry had actually completed six full plates of horderves, as well as the entire roast and was in the middle of devouring the remainder of the chicken. Less than ten minutes later, as she was actually loading the dishwasher as a matter of fact, he downed the last of his drink and popped the final bit of his meal into his mouth.

"Every time I see it, I'm never quite sure whether to be amazed, or disgusted," Caitlin admitted.

"Yeah," Harry agreed, "Tell me about it. Every time I'm going somewhere that food won't exactly be available, I have to make sure I fully stock in _waybread_ , otherwise I'm going to be starving before I can get anywhere. And before you ask, yes. Waybread is like _lembas bread_ from Tolkien. Except it would be better described as the wizard version of a protein energy bar. I make sure to pack plenty of those too."

Caitlin laughed at his joke, until she looked him in the eye and realized it wasn't a joke.

"Harry," she said, suddenly concerned. "Have you gone to check those doctors and that Healer that you said you were going to? Just to make sure that you _aren't_ aging rapidly every time you use your powers?"

Harry smiled and nodded. "Yes, Kat. I did. And I have check-ups scheduled with all of them for the end of the month. They're going to monitor the situation for a full year, but in the short term, I have nothing to worry about. Despite increased metabolism, by all appearances, my body doesn't actually speed up—in that way—when I use my speed. That, or my magic is negating it. Or, my lifespan as a wizard is long enough that it isn't making a difference. However you look at it, I am fine, and I can keep using my powers without worry."

She gave a sigh of relief and nodded. "OK then."

"So, this last mission you went out on," she segued. "What was it like? Rescue any fairy princesses? Slay any dragons?"

"Hahaha!" he laughed out loud. "Ah, no. Slaying dragons was my fourth year in school. Ironically, so was rescuing drowned princesses," he briefly mused.

"Well, I'm a Hit-wizard, Kat. Despite how it sounds like I'm some kind of magic assassin, it is more closer to being a bounty hunter, or perhaps a better analogy is the ICW answer to the United States Marshall service. More often than not, I get sent after various dark wizards, magical criminals, or some raging out of control magical creature that got loose in public. That's all this one was. Some... utter bastard by the name of Felix Faust pissed off the wrong official, and I got sent after him."

"How'd you catch him?" Caitlin asked, eager to hear more. "You did, didn't you? Catch him?"

"Yes," Harry nodded. "Turned him over to the Greeks, actually. They have... well, let's just say that he's pissed _them_ off the worst of everybody, and they know how to keep him under lock and key. Plus, none of them will just let him go, no matter what he offers as bribe."

"I don't believe it!" she exclaimed. "Bribes? To let somebody like that out of prison?"

Harry shrugged and replied, "Happens all the time. It's called the bail system, remember? Or if you're political enough, prisoner-exchange. It's why I didn't just give him over to the Americans, the ones that put forth the bounty in the first place."

"Wait, really?" she sounded surprised.

Harry blinked, seemingly just as surprised. So much for Caitlin being smarter than Hermione, as even _she'd_ have known about this particular connection, given how often she raved about... well, about you know who...

"Felix Faust, Kat," he over-pronounced the name. "From America's Most Wanted, Super Villains edition? I mean, for me, it was part of the man's file, but I know you actually watch that show, so I figured you would've recognized the name—"

"WAIT!" she screamed. " _That_ Felix Faust?! And... wait, _Greeks_?! Did you turn him over to the Amazon Nation?!"

Harry just smirked, and reached for the bowl of snacks that Anna kept fully-stocked in every room of the house. To keep from answering, he merely grabbed enough to fill his mouth for the time being, before getting up and wandering off.

"Harry, do you know Wonder Woman?!" Caitlin chased after him.

Every ear in the household perked up at the shouted question, but after a few seconds of silence and no discernible answer, they each returned to their respective tasks. In John Lynch's case, it was to enter the kitchen once he was sure Harry was gone to have a discussion with Anna.

"Hey guys," Harry greeted as he entered the living room. "Who's winning?"

"I am, of course," Grunge practically preened, before refocusing his attention back on the console game.

"Yeah, not for long, stud muffin," Roxy retorted, successfully executing a combo and then working to keep it going for as long as possible.

"Ohh! Good one, Rox, but check _this_ out!" Grunge retaliated.

Shaking his head in bemusement, Harry quickly moved on before Caitlin could catch up to him. Having lost sight of the speedster, not that he'd actually employed his GenActive powers at any point, the red-haired amazon sighed in defeat and returned to her workstation there in the living room.

Passing Bobby on his way down the hall, Harry nodded in greeting to the blond musician and paused long enough to say, "Hey Bobby, how's it hangin'?"

At those words, however, the plasma-wielding GenActive actually stopped and turned, responding, "OK, Harry, dude, seriously stop trying to mimic Grunge. It is seriously creepy when you do it."

Looking back, the black-haired speedster said, "Hey! I thought I was getting pretty good with my American accent."

Shaking his head and mock-putting-his-hands-over-his-ears, Bobby retorted, "Please, I'm begging you, just stop!"

"Fine, I suppose I have 'practiced' the accent enough for now," Harry relented, reverting back to his native English accent. He then turned fully around and asked, "But in all seriousness, how are things? Kat says you and Sarah have been working on your magicks, sometimes needing her to set up protections. How is that going? Everything all right?"

Bobby sighed and shrugged helplessly. "Eh, I'm... making some progress. Can't fly or create heat-shields like I can with my plasma powers, but I can make almost anything... uh, already flammable, ignite with just a thought. Well, an intentional thought," he quickly amended.

"That is actually some excellent progress," Harry told him.

"Really?" the young-but-slightly-older pyromancer perked up at the compliment.

"Truly," the wizard confirmed. "We'll have a get-together sometime tomorrow, I'll check on everyone's progress, and we'll set aside an hour for just you and me, see what we can do to push things along, all right?"

"All right!" Bobby nodded enthusiastically.

"Later then," Harry briefly said in 'American'.

"Ahh! Stop it! It's like kryptonite, dude, seriously!"

Harry just laughed and continued on his way.

Meanwhile, back in the living room, Roxy was finally getting the best of her beau in his favorite video game. "I—I can't _believe_ it!" Grunge exclaimed, jaw dropped to the floor in shock. "You _beat_ me, Rox! But... but I _never_ lose at this game!"

Smirking, and trying to gloat without gloating, she responded, "It was probably beginner's luck, Grunge-man. And besides, it's just a _game_. No big deal." Glancing over, resting her chin on the palm of her raised hand, she gave him an alluring glance and added, "Though you _do_ make a really _cute_ loser-face." She giggled.

Glowering, after picking his jaw up off the floor, Grunge said, "So it's just a game, huh?"

He then, faster than she could figure what he was doing, snatched the cartridge out of the console and forcible ejected it, saying, "Then you won't mind if I take the game card out..." he then stood up well out of her reach, even as she sat up in shock at what he'd done, "... _before_ you register the new high score! Which means that I'm still the _master assassin_! Hah!"

"Hey! Wait a minute! That's not fair!" she whined, starting to get angry.

"Like they say, Rox," Grunge taunted her, dancing further away from the TV and her wrath. (Too bad it wasn't far enough) "All's fair in love and—w— _whhoooaaaa_!"

Roxy had caught him with her gravity-manipulation powers, and was currently negating the Earth's natural gravity field from affecting him, her hands and the area around his body lit up with a bubble-like sky-blue glow, as he floated up to the ceiling, higher and higher off the ground. Once he was halfway between the floor and the ceiling—considering that the 'living room' was as tall as the building itself, that was about fifteen to twenty feet in the air, at the least—she halted his progress and held him there, just floating.

"Wha—whatcha doin', Rox?!" Grunge desperately questioned.

"Just thought I'd _lighten_ up that attitude of yours!" she remarked.

"Aw, c'mon, honeybear. I was just teasing you," he said, hoping to appease her. "Besides, I know you'd never do _anything_ to hurt your cute and lovable Grunge-man."

Smiling mischievously, Roxy said in return, "Sounds to me like somebody's _ego_ needs to come back down to _Earth_. Happy landings." She then cut her powers.

Feeling gravity _immediately_ start to exert its full force upon him once again, Grunge cried out, "Rox! No! Wa— _AAA_ _ **AIIIITT—**_ *!"

Grunge crashed to the floor, but felt himself hit something and an unnatural tug at the point of impact, followed shortly by the entirely natural sound and sensation of his head hitting a hard surface. Thankfully it wasn't the floor, but rather the thin metal side of a desk. Reaching under him, he pulled at what he felt pinching his backside and saw a handful of wires and plugs, not all of them still intact.

"Uh-oh," he mumbled, struggling to sit back up. "Hope these weren't connected to anything important."

Turning from her suddenly dead computer and monitor, Cailtin spun in her office chair to face the prone idiot leaning up against the side of her workstation desk. Looking him over, she shook her head, mostly disgusted at his appearance, but more for his lack of hygiene than anything about him specifically. Grunge had completely embraced the Californian Surfer way of life, having the same hairstyle, his signature tattoos on full display, and what shirts he did wear were always short-sleeved and left open to display his compact muscular chest. At the moment he was wearing a green shirt with the sleeves rolled as far up as he could get them, and completely unbuttoned and untucked from the cut-off khaki shorts he wore. On his feet, he was wearing a disgusting pair of over-sized patched green socks.

"You mean, _besides_ my computer workstation, Eddie?" the composed amazon said in answer to his question. She snatched the offered cables from his hand as he responded.

"I'm sorry, Kat. It was most uncool of me. Any damage?" he apologized, getting to his feet.

Sighing, she did a quick inspection and realized that it was all reparable. Especially with a couple of magicians in the house. "Not really," she said. "Luckily, I keep all of my work backed up on my hard drive, and a few external drives that you managed to avoid destroying."

Deciding to just go ahead and shut everything down, and worry about repairs later, she fully faced her two friends and decided to try and have an important talk with them. "Look, I know you two were just having some fun, but don't you think it's time that you started taking things a bit more seriously around here? I mean, if we're going to be working together as a _team_ , then I think it is really important that we try and do all our work assignments and attend all the training sessions and master our various mystic abilities..." she stood with her hands on her hips and faced them both squarely, "...instead of passing the time playing _video games_. We've got a great opportunity here to do a lot of good, you know?"

"Opportunity," Grunge nodded along, eyes glazed over, rubbing the back of his neck. "Right."

Catching the glare she sent his way, although in truth it was more about his lack of attention than the accident, he apologized again, "Look I really _am_ sorry, Kat..."

Roxy, arms crossed as she stood next to her boyfriend, cut him off and snapped, "What exactly do you _want_ from us, Kat?"

Surprised at the vehement response, Caitlin backed off somewhat, and tried to come up with a suitable reply. She found it wasn't exactly difficult.

"I _want_ to be a part of a team, a cohesive unit that can count on one another in _any_ situation," she said. "I want to be part of... of a family, I guess. And I want _this team_ to be that family. More than anything else, I want to go out with Harry on his next mission, but he insists that he can't risk taking any of us with him if we can't even meet Mr. Lynch's criteria. According to him, none of us get to go unless _all_ of us get to go. So if it were just me, maybe, but." She stopped and renewed her glare at the two of them and went from hands on her hips to crossed arms. "But I can't do it all by _myself_ , now can I?"

She let out a huff of frustration and ran a hand through her hair, gesturing hopefully toward the pair, saying, "I guess all I'm saying is that we've got to start taking more _responsibility_ for ourselves. I know that I'm doing all that I can to improve and learn everything that I can get my hands on about my mystical abilities, and I sometimes help out Bobby and Sarah with their own exercises and training. But outside of Mr. Lynch's official training times, I hardly ever see the two of you working out."

"We work out!" the pair of them said at the same time.

Then Grunge flexed his left bicep, incidentally putting it right in front of Roxy's face. "This kinda work don't come from _just_ good genetics, babe."

"Ugh, get over yourself," Roxy snorted and pushed his arm down.

"That is not what I meant, Eddie," Caitlin sighed, hands back on her hips. "Why are you two in here bickering over a video game you've been playing all afternoon, when you should be reading up on your... divination and barrier skills?"

"Well, okay," Grunge muttered, then pointed a finger at the punk girl at his side, "but Rox started it all."

"You are such a _LIAR_!" she screamed, rounding on him, before snapping her fingers, now lit with the same earlier blue-bubble glow, saying snarkily, "You can't get me to take the fall!"

Rising to the ceiling once more, Grunge had a 'Homer-Simpson-moment' and cried out, " _D'OH!_ "

Throwing up her hands in defeat, Caitlin rounded on her heels and stormed out. "That's it. I give up!"

"Me too, Rox!" Grunge surrendered. " _Rox_?! _NOOO—UNGH!_ "

This time his head really did hit the floor first. Thankfully it was carpeted.

 _Later That Evening (After Dinner)_

"You wanted to see me?" Harry said as he entered Lynch's office.

"Yes," the scarred, one-eyed man replied. "How did the mission go?"

"Eh," Harry shrugged, emulating Bobby when he was being moody. "It was just a job. Admittedly, it took me longer than expected to complete. On the other hand, there is the fact that I _actually_ completed it, which apparently nobody in the local ICW office truly expected that I could, so I suppose that says something about my skills."

"You've been hanging around us Americans too long," Lynch said. "How long have you been hunting this one down?"

"Couple of months," Harry answered. "First month here, we were all settling in, then I got the assignment and had to head out to Toronto to meet a contact."

"I recall," Lynch said. "You were only gone for the weekend. Caitlin was frantic. The training room took a real beating."

"That was when I met Goldeye," Harry elaborated. "If you recall, the next weekend is when I had him drop by to... evaluate the others."

"And then you had them split up to train under different masters for a little while during May," Lynch recalled. "Threw my schedule off a bit, but I've seen marked improvement from all of them. Yourself included, for the few times I can get you to stick around long enough for a training session."

"Oh, is that what this is about?" Harry laughed. "Want to go another round or three under the guise of it being a training session?"

"Your powers, Harry," Lynch stated, "both magical and the Gen Factor, are assets, tools that you can use in any situation. I'm just trying to show you how to use those tools. Don't let overconfidence be your downfall."

"Believe me, Lynch," Harry assured him, "I know precisely what my failings are, and what I can and cannot do. Fortunately, thanks to my Gen Factor, I now have a chance to actually think through my actions, rather than fly by the seat of my pants and smash into the rock wall of reality repeatedly. Is this about the conversation Caitlin and I had upon my return? About me taking the team out on these Hit-Wizard jobs of mine? Hunting down and capturing dark wizards?"

"Magicians are dangerous and unpredictable," he argued.

"Except against another 'magician'," Harry argued back. "Which is why I _won't_ take a single one of them until _all_ of them know what to expect and what they'd be dealing with. It is also why I insisted we take this particular safe house over the other one you'd pointed out. Sunnydale is a mystical hotspot. Before too long, I guarantee you that they'll all have the necessary experience that makes dealing with a dark wizard on the run seem like child's play."

"And the other missions?" Lynch put forth.

"That is your department, but I want in on those, so don't even think of trying to take the team out while I'm off on one of my other jobs."

"I wouldn't dream of it," Lynch laughed.

There was an air of comfortable silence for about twenty clicks of the grandfather clock in Lynch's study, and then neither one of them could take it anymore. Fortunately for the scarred colonel, Harry broke first, the impatience of youth.

"So," Harry said, "what is it that you really wanted to talk about, John?"

"..." the man hesitated before walking over and taking a seat behind his desk. Harry took the cue and sat down in the chair directly across from him. "The others, Caitlin in particular, have made it clear that they feel... that you _are_ their team leader. They also have made it clear that unless you show your agreement, they are free to ignore my instructions. Not to mention Anna's house rules."

"I was aware of this," he acknowledged. "I'm fairly certain Grunge got the message, and Roxy is _still_ too young to be buying her own cigarettes, and... quite frankly she's more addicted to the ones I conjure up than anything the stores sell."

"And Bobby and Caitlin's... disregard for my authority?" Lynch pressed.

"Which situations are you referring to?" Harry asked, struggling to maintain his composure. For some odd reason, he felt much as he had back in a certain detention setting when he'd gotten one particularly memorable scar on the back of his right hand. He may not be an anarchist, but his childhood and growing up in Hogwarts had taught him a... a great deal of scorn for authority. Particularly authority that seeks to take advantage of those younger and with less experience to further their own, unknowable agendas.

"It was nothing major," Lynch waved off any concern. "During training simulations, the pair of them, and the others as a result, ignored my instructions and very nearly lead themselves to injury. It was only thanks to their own gen-factors that allowed them to avoid a stay in the infirmary."

Harry nodded, resolving to go over all the records for the training sessions he hadn't been here for. Then he turned it around and asked, "Did they successfully complete the objectives of the simulation?"

Lynch frowned, his scars showing even deeper across his left eye from the expression. Eventually, he grated out a reluctant answer, "... Yes."

"How much effort would they have saved themselves if they'd done it your way?" he asked.

"At least a full ten minutes, and again, they wouldn't have nearly gotten themselves killed, or at the least put on the casualty list," he answered.

"So you just need to show them the difference then," Harry declared with a spread of his hands, as though the answer was obvious.

"What do you mean?" Lynch questioned.

Harry smirked, glad to have caught the man off-guard. "These are not..." he started, then stopped himself and sat up straighter. "John, we are not soldiers. Yes, we spent most of last year in a training program designed to turn us _into_ SPB-soldiers, but the reason our team was in the top slots mostly came down to the fact that we stuck together, as a unit. Individually, we're still kids, teenagers and young adults that haven't even graduated college yet! We're all at the age where we make mistakes and go out late to parties and all the other stereotypes one sees in the movies and on TV. Also, none of us _signed up_ for military service, like you did. We were _recruited_ , by people in suits, or GenActives with a seduction-based power, and told that it was a 'government-funded development program' or other such rot. Stop treating us like soldiers that _volunteered_ for service or signed up for a Special Ops Unit, because we _aren't_!"

Lynch sat back in his chair and stared with scrutiny at the young man seated before him. He may not have been the oldest of the team, but he was undoubtedly the most world-weary and experienced of the lot of them. "What happened to you, Harry?"

Surprised, the youth leaned back and crossed his arms, answering defensively, "What do you mean?"

Shaking his head, Lynch said, "Sorry, it is just... Sometimes I look at you and think that you're no different from the rest of the kids, needing guidance and support and... help. But then you say or do something and I... it's like I'm looking at your grandfather all over again. The man was the best commanding officer I ever served under, and it wasn't just because he was smart and knew how to get things done. It was because he saw all of us, all of his unit, not just as weapons, tools, assets to be used. He saw us as his brothers and treated us as such. You're..." Lynch coughed to clear his throat, "You may _look_ just like your father, but _you_ are just like your grandfather."

Blinking away his own outpouring of emotions, Harry nodded, but didn't say anything.

When they both had themselves more under control, they straightened in their seats and as before, Harry spoke first. "I'll, uh, I'll talk to Caitlin and Bobby about things, and make sure that the rest understand the chain of command around here. In the mean time, though, maybe you should try and have the team complete the simulation objectives on their own, and then try it again following your instructions. Keep it simple and randomized, and they may come to the correct conclusions on their own. Also, be sure to schedule in time for their mystic training. Right now, it seems they're all free-styling it, and while Kat and Sarah are taking full advantage of that, the others seem to be viewing it as extra free time. They can't afford that. Especially not Grunge. Around here, his powers are going to be the _most_ effective and the most desirable when the demon community gets word of us being on the Hellmouth."

"About that," Lynch spoke up. "We haven't come across anything... supernatural. No vampires, demons, or ghosts, or much of anything really. Where have they all gone, I wonder?"

"Eclipse. High school graduation. Explosion. Mayor presumed dead."

"... OK," Lynch reluctantly admitted. "Nothing supernatural has happened to _us_."

"I've got every ward in the wizarding book, and _then some_ on this place," Harry pointed out. "Why is it you think that I _really_ spent a solid two weeks staying here before going out on Hit-Wizard jobs? Took a full week to get the bloody things installed, and then a total thirteen _days_ before they could be charged enough to start drawing off of not only the local ley lines, but the others' magic as well! Of course the wards would be more stable and a good deal stronger if they all _used_ their magics more often, but..." he trailed off with a sigh.

"We haven't exactly been hermits," he said in counterpoint.

"The wards extend down to the water and an equivalent distance in all directions," Harry explained. "As for the rest, well... Explosion? Mayor presumed dead? Safe to say that if there _was_ an organized supernatural community, they either just got their head cut off, or were told in the wake of said explosion to keep their heads down. That will change before too much longer, I guarantee you."

"And then what?" Lynch prompted.

"And then, hopefully," Harry said, "the others will be prepared to handle it when evil rears its ugly head. And unfortunately, John, evil isn't just mercenaries with no morals, megalomaniacs with WMDs, or supervillains with godlike powers. Sometimes, it's the devil."

Getting up to leave, Harry stopped at the door and looked back. "I'll talk to the others, see what I can do to make sure they understand. In the meantime, I think you've got a new schedule to write up."

Smiling, which somehow seemed to make the scars across his eye almost disappear, Lynch nodded and waved the young hero out of his office. Then he turned to his computer and started to write up a new training schedule. A few hours later, the same computer began to give him an alert as highly specific sensors he'd installed detected a nearby threat in town.

 _Seven Weeks Ago_

It was the last weekend of April. Harry had left the previous weekend for some kind of mission having to do with his Hit-Wizard job, coming back pretty beat up and tired enough that he'd actually slept for a solid fifteen hours. He'd also 'left' this weekend, only to come back five hours later, bringing someone with him.

Now they were all sitting in the 'backyard' of their villa home—which in all honesty was just the deck-area next to the pool and about seven meters away from the 'stairs' that went down to the beach on the other side of the retaining wall—waiting for Harry and his new friend to explain what was going on. The sound of waves at high tide in the background certainly wasn't helping with Grunge's concentration.

"What is this all about, Harry?" Bobby asked.

"Yeah," Roxy pointed out, "I thought you were all about us training while you were away on your little side-missions. What's with coming back so soon? Are you just that awesome that you finished up already?"

"Dude! This is prime surf time!" Grunge whined.

"While we're raising concerns," Sarah added her two cents, "Who is this that you brought back with you? And for the record, even if you were only going to LA, you were back far too quickly to have actually done anything."

Harry sighed and glanced to see if Lynch, Caitlin or Anna were about to add anything. Upon seeing them remain silent, but curious, he decided to go ahead and get started.

"Fine," he raised his hands to stall any further comments. "I'm _so sorry_ to have taken you all away from your busy pursuits of _shopping_ ," a glare at Roxy, " _surfing_ ," a harsh frown at Grunge, "and _vegging out_!" an accusing glance at Bobby. They all had the decency to duck their heads and look away, before refocusing their attention on his next words.

"For the record, I actually still have yet to complete my first assignment as a Hit-wizard, but while I was working on that, I came across somebody that will be able to help you all out in your own mystical paths. Everyone, this is Niklaren Goldeye, a powerful mage. From Toronto. Canada. You can call him Niko."

That raised some eyebrows, and not all for the same reason.

"Knee-koe?" Grunge repeated. "That some kind of cat-thing?"

The dark-eyed man sighed, rolling his eyes, apparently having heard similar throughout his life. Thankfully, he'd dressed down in preparation for the Southern Califonia heat, so instead of a three-piece-suit, he was wearing a white cotton shirt and light beige khakis. With his black hair pulled back in a tight ponytail and his trimmed beard combed straight, he presented a cool and in-control demeanor.

"It is a name I only let my friends call me," Niko told them. "I assumed that friends of Harry could be considered the same. Was I mistaken?"

"Not at all, Mister Niko," Caitlin immediately got to her feet to offer her greetings. "We're just all curious as to why Harry would invite you into our home like this. He said that you're a powerful mage. How is that different from Harry being a powerful wizard?"

At the question, both experienced magic-users' eyes lit up.

"That is a... complicated question," Harry admitted.

"With a rather simplistic answer," Niko said with a teasing smile. "Mister Potter here, uses a wand. I do not. That's all. Wizards use wands, mages use magic directly, through force of will and other foci."

"Which isn't to say that wizards _can't_ use magic directly, we just... our magic works better with wands," Harry defended.

"And that brings us right around to why I am here today," Niko concluded.

"Why is...?" Caitlin started to say before it suddenly clicked for all of them, except Grunge. "You're here to help us figure out what kind of magic each of us has."

"Exactly," Niko nodded.

"How exactly are you going to do that?" Sarah asked, suspicious.

"It's the way Niko's magic works," Harry quickly said, before anyone else could speak. "His specialty is _Sight Magic_. Or, for the layman, he can _see magic_. He is also one of the world's foremost Diviners, but that is neither here nor there."

"Whoa," Grunge perked up. "That means you got like, X-Ray Vision? I want _that_ magic power!"

Niko rolled his eyes and shook his head.

"I did warn you," Harry shrugged.

"Yes, well, thanks for that warning, I suppose," Niko responded.

"How would this work?" Sarah interrogated them. "What would we have to do? What exactly are you going to be seeing about us? Why do we even have to do this? Aren't dealing with our... other powers difficult enough?"

"Magic doesn't affect and isn't affected by the Gen Factor," Harry elaborated. "But that doesn't mean we won't all have to deal with it at some point. Sarah, you can shoot lightning out of your fingertips, Bobby, you make plasma and can control fire, Grunge, you control every molecule of your body, Roxy, you control _gravity_! And Caitlin is an all-around-super-human. Every single one of you have held my wand and gotten _sparks_ at the _least_! Kat, you actually poured out so much raw magic that it is amazing you're not already levitating and transfiguring and blowing up everything around you. My point is, just because you can't use it the same as your Gen Factor powers, doesn't mean you won't use your magical powers—whatever they may be—anyway. So, first step, since it is clear none of you are wizards, or the female equivalent," they'd already had a 'thing' about him calling the girls witches, "is identification. Once we know _what_ you can do, then the next step is figuring out how to use it. After that, you guessed it; training."

"As for how long this is going to take," said Niko, "shouldn't be more than an hour, at the most. Then I can head on back to Toronto and deal with young people _far_ more mature than you lot."

"An hour?" Grunge whined. "C'mon, man! Can't you hear those waves? They're callin' me dude!"

"Well, since you're so impatient," Harry smirked, stepping in front of the tattooed surfer bum, "you get to go first, Grunge. Congratulations. You're the guinea pig so that the others can be reassured."

"Uh... I, um, well, when you put it that way, I don't mind goin' last, y'know...?" Grunge gulped.

"Really? You sure?" he was asked.

At the nervous nod, Harry continued, "You won't mind just sitting here, doing absolutely nothing, just waiting while Niko talks with the others, listening to the call of the waves, staying completely still?"

Sweat began to bead on the youth's forehead, and it wasn't even a few seconds before he broke.

"All right man! I'll do it! It won't hurt will it? I mean, I'll still do it, but I still won't have to stay here for the whole hour, right dude?" he begged.

"Best get this outta the way for all our sakes," Harry guided the shorter, yet bulkier man inside.

"You do have a talent for understatement, don't you Harry?" Niko joked, leading Grunge further inside.

Once the two were out of hearing range, Caitlin immediately got back to her feet and towered over her team leader. "All right, Harry. In all seriousness, what is going on here? First of all, you tell a complete stranger about us, second, you bring him to our _safe house_ , and third, most importantly, what exactly is this going to involve?"

Looking up into her green eyes with his own flashing in amusement, he replied, "First, Niko and his student already know about me, and they're both sworn to secrecy. _Magically_ sworn. Not only won't they tell anyone, they _can't_. Second, he doesn't know where we are and if he somehow found out, he still would not be able to pinpoint it on a map, digital or otherwise. It is one of the protections I placed here, this location is unplottable, meaning that it _can not be mapped_. Furthermore, the method of transportation that I used to bring Niko here is called a Portkey. Suffice it to say, one minute we were in Toronto, and then the next we were on the outskirts of town. And third, as I mentioned, Niko is a Diviner, he uses divination. Most assume that has something to do with telling the future, but the practical is considerably... more simple. If it has anything to do with gathering or revealing information, magically speaking that is what divination is. So, in most cases, Niko probably already knows what each of you can do, just from sight alone. He'd be able to see it in your auras. For the few that it wouldn't be that easy for, he'll need to use magical tools. Whatever or however he uses those tools to determine it, the whole process will be completely non-invasive. At most he may have you hold something, or stare into a candle and meditate for a bit."

"Why can't you do this?" Roxy pouted.

"Because I'm pants at divination," he said vehemently.

"Well, that and I've actually been trying, but all the spells I've cast have either come back with a non-result, or a measure of the amount of power you can bring forth. Should come at no surprise to everyone that Kat is, of course, the strongest out of all of us, magically speaking. Wizards are actually sort of insulated. At least the ones I grew up around were. If it wasn't carrying a wand, it wasn't a wizard and therefore wasn't a magical _person_ but instead a magical _creature_. I'm trying to keep you lot away from that sort of prejudice, thank you very much, so please appreciate the effort I've gone to in order to get us some bloody answers without having you all labeled as sub-humans."

They all blinked in shock at his reaction, but were quick to assure him of their cooperation. Caitlin even going so far to hug the shorter man to her chest. Not that he'd _ever_ say no to a full-on-Kat-hug.

About ten minutes after they went inside, Niko came back out with a rather stunned-looking Grunge, although that truly wasn't saying much as the surfer-bum often appeared stoned or otherwise out-of-it.

"Can I see Miss Rainmaker next, if that is all right?" Niko requested.

Frowning, but quick to mask it, the Apache was soon on her feet and following along behind the Sight Mage. Meanwhile the others began interrogating Grunge.

"Well?" Roxy demanded of her boyfriend. "What did he say? Did you find out you've got magic x-ray-vision like you wanted?"

"Huh? Oh, no, nuthin' like that," Grunge shook his head.

"You weren't in there long," Harry observed. "And being the second most powerful of us magically, your talent must be pretty close to the surface. What did he call you? In the end, after the testing? He would have told you what the name of your talent is, Eddie."

Blinking owlishly up at the wizard, he nodded slowly and repeated the word he'd been told and the explanation behind it. Or at least as much of it as he could remember.

"Uhm... he said I'm a, a _Kekkaishi_ ," Grunge said. "I can, uh... like, make kekkai, um, barriers and stuff."

Harry's brows went up in surprise. "Did he show you _how_?" he wanted to know.

"Uh, yeah," he nodded and then looked over at a nearby potted plant along the railing. He held his first two fingers up on his right hand in front of his chest. He closed his eyes and then opened them, focused solely on the potted plant. He then spoke three words, pointing right at the plant on the second word and then sweeping his fist upwards on the third. " _Houi_! _Jouso_! _Ketsu_!"

In reaction to his words and gestures, there was a spark of magic in the area immediately around the plant, followed by the spark then hastily tracing out a perfect square along the ground, before instantly expanding that square into a perfect cube forcefield of a reddish-crimson shade, but transparent.

Harry blinked and looked back and forth between the fully-developed _kekkai_ and the one that had cast it for several seconds. Finally, he couldn't help commenting, "So, it's safe to assume that most of the time was spent explaining to you what a Kekkaishi is, does, and convincing you that you were one by teaching you this spell?"

"Uh, yeah, something like that," Grunge said, still pretty out of it. "He, uh, he also taught me a couple other things that I can do. Also, uh, gave me a card. Some place called Karasumori, where I could go to learn more. Think it's in Japan or someplace like that."

"What other spell did he teach you?" Bobby asked, suddenly a whole lot more interested in learning magic as he and Caitlin investigated the crimson forcefield.

" _Kai_!" Grunge snapped, holding his fingers before him again. The kekkai vanished.

"He also showed me how to destroy spirits," Grunge grumbled, turning away. "I'm going surfing."

Nobody stopped him as he raced to get his board and then jumped off the wall down to the sand, bypassing the stairs entirely. Harry frowned and glared back towards the house where Niko was currently informing Sarah what her magic was. Caitlin put her hand on the wizard's shoulder to calm him.

"He shouldn't have done something like that," Harry growled.

"Maybe it was the only way Grunge would listen?" she suggested. "Or maybe there really was some kind of evil spirit in the house and he just took advantage of an opportunity?"

Harry took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No, I know what a kekkaishi is and what they do. Most of them, yes, they employ themselves as exorcists. Grunge wouldn't be able to complete the spell-chain, not without a talisman, to create a portal to the ether. Which means that he would've been forced to destroy it entirely. That sort of thing weighs on a soul, Kat. I should know."

Before the conversation could continue, Niko and Sarah returned, having finished much quicker than Grunge had, and the young woman in considerably better spirits. She was also carrying a rather thick, leather-bound book with her.

"I'm a witch," were the first words out of her mouth.

Which was more than a little surprising, as she'd been the one most against Harry calling the girls by that particular title.

"More of the modern definition, rather than the old belief system," Niko was quick to assure them.

"Can I talk with you for a moment?" Harry snapped.

Smiling, Niko nodded, and only took a single step off to the side as Harry rounded on him. "What _exactly_ did you show Grunge to convince him of what he could do?"

"I had him vaporize an orange, and told him to imagine it was a ghost of a little girl that would possess and kill all his friends if he didn't send it on to the afterlife," Niko replied, still smiling.

"... An orange?" Harry confirmed.

"I think he was a little bit more disturbed by what I told him would be waiting for him if he _did_ go to that address I gave him in Karasumori for more training. He really does not like to work, does he?" Niko surmised.

"If he doesn't now, he soon will," Harry growled, now at the bum that had just played him.

"Miss Fairchild, I apologize, but I fear that your results will actually take us the longest to deduce, so if you, please, wouldn't mind going last? Bobby, is it? This shouldn't take long, but, er... perhaps we'd best take care of this outside. Harry? The, er, device that you mentioned? Just in case?"

"Really? Him? Not who I would've figured but, hm, not all that surprising either," said Harry as he handed over a small circular device to the mage.

"So, what's with you calling yourself a witch now, Sarah?" Roxy questioned once Niko and Bobby were quite a distance further down the beach.

Taking a closer look at the book in her hands, Harry's eyes lit up once more as he whistled, appreciative. "You're a Nature Witch?"

"Not... exactly," Sarah muttered, embarrassed.

"That's a... a book of shadows, isn't it? A grimoire, used by those of the wiccan faith," Caitlin clarified.

"... Yes," she admitted. "But I'm not a wiccan, if you must know. But I do have a... a connection, to Gaia. The spirit of the Earth. Mother Nature, if you will."

They all stared, but it was Roxy who said, "Wow. Talk about calling it. You control the elements, can create any kind of weather you like, and you are a witch that has Mother Nature on speed-dial. Whodda thunk?"

"That's not... exactly the case," Sarah said. "Look, I just, I need some time to process this. And, well, I doubt that I'll be hard-up for teachers, Niko says there are covens of real witches out there all over the place. And natural witches, those born with a unique magical power, may even be able to help me out. Mostly though, I'm going to be like Harry, having to cast spells with different kinds of foci, just not wands apparently."

"Or if you do use a wand, you'll need spells compatible to you, rather than wizards," Harry commented.

"This is a starter, a... guidebook, filled with spells, to help me better understand what I'll be getting into. _IF_ I pursue this. There are... a lot of dangers out there," she explained.

"Nature witches do have their own magical power, like wizards," Harry quickly elaborated, "but that core is tied into the surrounding... mana, for lack of a better term. In order to use their magic at all, they have to draw in power from other sources. Most often from various gods and goddesses out there. But, sometimes," he took a deep breath and shared a look of concern with Sarah, "there are also demons and other dark forces to draw upon. Those that make using magic... easy, if you will. The most pure source, of course, would be Gaia, but she... well, there is a reason that the phrase 'Don't mess with Mother Nature' can be translated into every language on this planet."

"Will," Caitlin hesitated to say anything, but she quickly found her voice, "will Sarah have to join one of these covens? In order to learn, I mean?"

"No," Harry shook his head. "This sort of thing is entirely voluntary, and for the few that aren't, I highly doubt that you would be interested in that kind of group, Sarah. For right now, I'll get you as many books as I can, and you have the book there to help you get started. After that, well, we'll see where we go from there. Either way, Sarah, know that we have your back and you can count on all of us."

"Even me," Lynch finally spoke up to say something.

"You can count on all of us," Anna reiterated.

"Thank you," she nodded her head, much relieved.

About five minutes later, after some impressive fireworks further down the beach, near where the driftwood was naturally collected, Bobby and Niko returned, the human torch practically bursting with excitement. He couldn't even make it all the way up the stairs before announcing to the whole group, "I'M A _PYROMANCER_! WOO-HOO!"

"What were you saying about whodda thunk, Roxy?" Sarah joked.

"Tell me about it," the punk-haired girl grumbled. "I swear, if my powers are to like, levitate and stuff, I'm calling cheat!"

"Your powers have nothing to do with telekinesis or the like, Miss Spaulding," Niko stated clear as day.

"Oh, you can tell that at just a glance, can you?" she sniped at him.

"Yes, that much I can," he said, smirking. "As I can tell that you are not a witch, such as Miss Rainmaker, or even more distinctive as Bobby and Edmund are. I'll actually need to utilize my tools to further narrow down yours, and Miss Fairchild's, true talents. Shall we then?" He gestured and then followed her inside.

"So, pyromancer?" Caitlin questioned Bobby.

"Oh yeah, here you go, Harry," the blond tossed the same tech-device the black-haired wizard had handed off to the mage earlier.

"What is that?" Sarah questioned.

"A power inhibitor," Lynch was the one to answer, having gotten a better look at the device now. They all shot Harry surprised and suspicious looks.

"Like the ones Threshold used on us?" Rainmaker near-growled.

"Similar," Harry admitted, holding up the round device. "Got this one from Anna, actually. Doesn't so much turn off our powers as suppresses them. Since we escaped, I've made it a point to learn how to get out of every sort of type of this device that exists out there. Currently, I can escape or negate the effects of thirty-seven percent of them, almost instantly. After working at it for several minutes, I can negate a further twelve percent. Given several hours to a day, I can throw off the effects of over 97 percent of power inhibitors out there. The dozen or so that not even I can break away from, well, thankfully those are all used by people we either know are our enemies, or don't know about us in the first place. I fully intend on making it so I can get out of that 97 percent instantly sometime in the future, I just have to keep working at it."

"When Niko explained what my magic powers were," Bobby said, "I couldn't figure out how to use them instead of my plasma-based powers, seeing as they both have the same triggers; I want something hot, I focus on it getting hot. So he pulled out that thing, and voila, next thing I'm setting on fire, I'm doing it with magic, and I can _feel_ the difference!"

"I had a suspicion that one or more of you guys might have ' _similar_ ' magics to your Gen-Factors, so I told Niko about it and had this little thing ready, just in case," Harry explained. "See, this is one of the few power inhibitors our there that cannot be negated by using magic around it. Can still use magic _on it_ , but it would have to be spell-specific to actually get it to stop working."

"So, you can feel the difference between your powers and your, er, magic?" Caitlin questioned the now-affirmed pyromancer.

Nodding, he happily replied, "Yep! Looking back, I'm kind of amazed that I _couldn't_ tell the difference before, but then, I suppose the magic was always there, wasn't it?"

"Usually," Harry shrugged.

"I wonder if it is the same for me?" Caitlin asked, curious.

"Probably," the black-haired wizard remarked. "I mean, I'm not kidding about how much raw magic you can channel, Kat. If that is going on _all the time_ , and you still can't feel the difference, then either it is very close in nature to your own abilities, or you can somehow channel it subconsciously and aren't aware because of that."

Getting to his feet, Harry drew them to the back of the deck, where he pulled out a wand and quickly conjured some standard blocks of wood. "Let's try something real quick. Bobby, using your magic, and focusing very closely on the targets here, I want you to cast the spell _Incendio_. It's a First Year spell, meant to light candles and hardly anything else. Normally I'd have you learn the wand movements along with the proper pronunciation, but I doubt you'll need either. Just focus on your magic, on the targets, and then say the spell."

"That's it? Niko had me going on about meditating and pulling my power in and containing it and stuff!" Bobby exclaimed.

"That's for control, and a measurement of your power," Harry replied. "I use a wand. Mages, like you and Niko, use your own will. If you don't want to go around setting _everything_ on fire, I would listen to him about meditating. In the meantime, this is a simple exercise, and nothing more."

"All right," he said, taking a breath, he focused on the conjured blocks of wood, focused, and cast the spell, " _Incendio_!"

A candle-flames worth of fire sparked against wood and was quickly blown out by the wind.

"Oh what a jip!" Bobby yelled. "What the hell, man? Do I have like, the lowest level of magic or what?"

"No, actually, that would be Lynch," Harry responded, having paid closer attention to Bobby than the target during his casting. "I think I see why wizards tend to underestimate mages. With a wizard, put a compatible enough wand in his or her hand, and they'll be casting at full power with no hesitation. Mages, on the other hand, you really do have to focus to get your magic to do what you want it to, don't you? Lose that focus, and lose most of your power that we wizards get just from picking up a wand. Try it again, Bobby, but this time, do what Niko told you to do. Focus on gathering your power inward, take as long as you need, and then when _you_ are ready, try the spell again. Please?" he added when it looked like he might argue.

"Fine," the pyromancer grumbled, closing his eyes and taking measured breaths.

After a solid minute and a half, during which nobody but Bobby—breathing in time with the sound of the waves—moved or made any noise, the blond pyromancer opened his eyes and softly whispered, " _Incendio_."

All of the blocks of wood immediately caught fire and within seconds were burned away to ash.

They all stared, stunned, even the one that had accomplished the feat.

"Right, so, meditation is now part of your daily schedule," Harry said, clapping his teammate across his shoulders. "I'll also be getting you what spells and books that I know have to do with fire magic. Something to keep in mind, Burnout," he called him by his code name to ensure he had his attention, "Fire magic isn't all destructive. You can do a _lot_ with fire and the flame. Learn what all can be done, and then strive to do it. I know for a fact that some aspects of fire magic can be used to heal and protect, just as easily as it can be used to shoot off fireballs."

"Yeah, thanks, I'll, uh, I'll keep that in mind," Bobby nodded, still stunned at the difference in his casting techniques.

Fortunately, before much else could be said, Niko and Roxy returned, with the pink-and-purple-haired teenager looking just as out-of-it as Grunge had at first. That was quick to change, however, when she noticed everyone's stares. "What?" she snapped at them all.

"Well?" Caitlin said impatiently. "What kind of magic do you have?"

"Oh, that, yeah, I'm a divine whatever, like Niko here," she said off-handed.

Rolling their eyes in unison once again, Harry and Niko exchanged a look, and during said exchange, it was determined that Harry would be the one to explain.

"You are a _Diviner_ , Roxy," he elaborated. "It means your talents lie with the practical use of Divination. What I was talking about earlier? Magically finding out or revealing information?"

"Like I'm going to go around reading everyone's tea leaves and tarot cards and looking into crystal balls while telling them that they'll soon meet a tall, dark, handsome stranger that will either love them or kill them," she said with disgust.

"Yeah," Harry laughed, blushing slightly, "No. That's how wizards use divination. I'm fairly certain that if Niko isn't already willing to take on yet another student, he at least knows somebody locally that could help you out?" He said this last bit in a begging, hopeful tone.

Taking a deep, meditative, breath of his own, Niko sadly shook his head. "No, I'm afraid that I am out of touch with much of the magical community in this part of the world. And really, Harry, you thought I wouldn't recognize the _stench_ of the Primary Hellmouth? Besides, this is hardly the place to be _learning_ magic. Far too many corruptive influences and temptations about. Even if the soul was as pure as could be, learning to cast magic, without knowing what pitfalls to avoid along the way, they'd be as black as night by the time they were twenty. And if not, then they'll have certainly been stained enough to be labeled 'Dark' by Harry's people."

He brought himself up and more closely inspected the young girl before him, who seemed to shrink in upon the appraisal. "No, I'm afraid that, to do my duty, and to ensure her safety, I shall have to take Roxanne in as my student. Or, perhaps... Hm, what do you think, Harry? Would Roxy make a good student for... my wayward student?"

Harry blinked, and then grinned, examining Roxy much as Niko had just done. "You are absolute evil, my friend. Do it."

"Hey, what about this all being voluntary!" Roxy exclaimed.

"That was in regards to Sarah, and the fact that she's a Nature Witch," Harry pointed out. " _You_ are a Diviner Mage, one who doesn't even know how to use her powers properly yet. And you need a teacher, both for your safety, as well as all those around you. Or do you suddenly want to go around seeing people's deaths, or getting uncontrolled sounds and images and whatnot coming to you from out of nowhere."

Roxy flinched at that, but they all noticed.

"It's already started, hasn't it?" Harry sighed, saddened.

"Is this... is that how I got the vision of Roxy being in pain, when Threshold was torturing you all?" Caitlin asked, curious.

"... Yes," Harry said after some hesitation. "I had actually suspected it might have been your own magic activating, but Roxy 'reaching out', providing you information, to the one person she had a connection with that wasn't right there with her, it makes sense."

"She actually has a rudimentary form of Mage Sight," Niko reported. "She isn't able to see everything that I can, thankfully, but she is able to detect active uses of magic. Which might explain how she's noticed it more in recent weeks." He said that mostly as an accusation to Harry.

"I've actually kept my active use to a minimum, after setting up the wards," he defended himself. Then asked, curious, "Can you _see_ the wards, Roxy?"

"Not... all the time," she shrugged. "Just, sorta outta the corner of my eye. Sometimes. It's the... the after-images and the things that aren't really there that really get to me."

"Which places?" he questioned.

"The abandoned lot on Bleaker, the Lowell House over on fraternity row, and that bar called the Alibi Room?" she listed the ones she remembered.

Harry whistled. "Rack's den, a place more haunted than my old school, and the one place in town with wards keyed to let in demons and vampires but to keep out ordinary humans. Looks like you'll be heading back with one other, Niko. Roxy, I hate to be this kind of guy, but you need to go pack. Now."

"Wait, what do you mean?!" she yelled.

Grunge, having had his fill of surfing, came charging up the stairs, surfboard in tow as he heard his girlfriend's shout. "Hey Rox, what is it? What's goin' on?"

"Roxy," Harry explained, ignoring Grunge, "You need training. At the very least, you need to gain control over your magic. If you're _already_ able to see past wards like those places you mentioned, even partially, your powers are growing stronger every day. You have to go with Niko and start your training _today_!"

"But..." she whined.

"Not to worry," Niko was quick to assure her. "I'll only handle your teachings in meditation and control. If you truly wish to pursue the path of your power, I know someone... far more suited to your nature. She is nearly as irrepressible as yourself, young lady."

"Whoa, wait, Roxy ain't goin' nowhere!" Grunge shouted, finally catching up with the conversation.

"You're going someplace as well, Grunge," Harry grinned rather sadistically at the surfer bum.

Shaking his head most emphatically, the half-asian tattooed surfer forgot all about Roxy as he vehemently denied, "Unh-uh! No way! I ain't goin' nowhere! And you can't make me! No way, dude!"

"Niko, you and Kat better get started figuring out what her talents are. I'll handle this in the meantime," said Harry.

"Right this way, my dear," Niko gestured and allowed the sundress clad amazon to precede him through the doorway. The time since Niko's arrival and the 'testing' had begun had been just under half an hour by this point. It would be almost forty-five minutes before anybody saw either of them again.

Meanwhile, Harry continued to argue with Roxy and Grunge, the confirmed and reaffirmed slackers of the team, that not only _should_ they go to receive magic training, but they _would_ be going, and he would be hand-delivering both of them if it came to that. Fortunately, Harry had Roxy convinced inside of ten minutes, and all it took was casting a few esoteric and 'less-flashy' spells that nobody but Harry and Roxy could see the effects of. Grunge took... a lot more convincing. Enough that they were still arguing about it by the time that Caitlin and Niko finally did emerge from the young woman's evaluation.

"Hey guys," Caitlin greeted upon walking back out onto the deck. "What's going on here?"

"Not going!" Grunge shouted.

"Going!" Harry shouted back.

" _Not_ going!"

"Uh, yeah, _going_!"

Sarah, sitting by the pool, reading through her grimoire, answered Caitlin's question. "It devolved to this about five minutes ago. Grunge doesn't want to leave."

"Not _going_!"

"And Harry insists that he learns how to better use his powers," she concluded.

"Going, going, gone even!"

"Plus," Bobby added, walking back over with his guitar, "the real reason Grunge wants to stay has nothing to do with his usual lazy attitude, or fear of his magic or the strange teachers or whatever."

"Not going times infinity!"

"Why doesn't he want to go?" Caitlin asked.

"You already used that, and Going times Infinity to the Infinitieth power!"

The redhead shot her team leader an incredulous look and almost missed Bobby's answer, but said answer drew forth its own incredulous look once she heard it.

"He doesn't want to leave such 'prime surf real estate' and miss out on all the babes in bikinis."

"He _what_?!" she exploded.

Before the 'going/not going' argument could even further devolve, the super-strong, nigh-invincible amazon stormed over to the shorter surfer and almost casually picked him up by his throat until he was at her eye level.

"You're going Grunge! No excuses! Because, quite frankly, the excuses you do have are worth _shit_!" she yelled in his face.

Everyone in earshot, they all gasped. Caitlin didn't curse. She just wasn't that type of person. Period.

"And I promise you this, _Ed_ ," she hissed in his face. "If I hear that you did not do _everything_ that you possibly could to learn absolutely _everything_ that you possibly can do with your magic... We. Will. Have. Words. And you won't like it." She tightened her squeeze until he was more purple in the face than red. "Believe it."

Dropping him to the floor, she turned and walked off toward the railing nearest the beach, but still on the back deck. Helping the shorter man to his feet, Harry patted the coughing GenActive on the back and added, "You're going, cause she's on my side. And, I say so."

"Aw man," he grumbled, once he'd caught his breath that is.

Once the situation had calmed down, they all regathered on the deck and settled down to hear about Fairchild's magic. As with the last few, in some ways it wasn't that surprising, but it also wasn't a clear "oh, that is so obvious" situation either.

"Caitlin's magic, suffice it to say," Niko said, "is Protection Magic. And you are right about her being able to channel the most raw power out of you all. Most defensive magic users tend to have greater reserves on average as it is. Also, she is not, technically speaking, a mage. Nor is she a wizard, or a witch, or even a sorceress. It also explains the reaction she had with your wand, Harry. She _can_ use a wand. As she can create barriers and circles of protection as mages can. She can also cast magic with but a thought as sorcerers and sorceresses can. But she can only use _defensive_ magic."

"So... she's a tank?" Grunge said, relating to the one subject he knew enough about to hazard a guess; video games.

"A little bit indelicate, but yes," Niko replied. "I tested her magic extensively with all the tools and spells at my disposal. She... her magic is, well, it technically defies classification. She _is_ a mage, a wizard, a Nature Witch, a Natural-Born witch, a Sorceress and a Mystic, all at the same time. But the only spells that she can cast from those various disciplines are _Protective Magic_ in nature. I have never seen the like."

"Can she do what I can?" Grunge asked.

In reply, Caitlin held up her hand as Grunge had when first demonstrating his kekkai, and without the words, created a perfect cube in mid-air, followed by a perfect cylinder, a flawless sphere, a three-sided pyramid, and an tetrahedron, one right after the next. Unlike Grunge's which was a crimson shade and transparent, Caitlin's was the same shade of green as Harry's eyes, and only some of them were transparent, while others were completely solid, and one or two even glowing with an internal power. Like...

"Hey, they look kind of like the Green Lantern's constructs!" Bobby pointed out.

"Except this is magic," Caitlin said, slashing her hand through the air, releasing all of them at once. "And whatever the superhero Green Lantern does, he uses alien technology. He's said so, as have multiple experts. Plus, everyone knows that he uses a ring to make all those constructs. I was just doing what Grunge did, but in my head, and I used magic to do it."

"You can feel it now?" Sarah confirmed. Caitlin nodded her head.

"Yes, it's... it is indescribable," she said, her voice and expression filled with wonder. "Like fire and lightning coursing through my veins, but, solid and tangible, but at the same time as intangible as water or air. I can... _feel it_ with my mind, but when I try to define it, it's just... _energy_!"

"Hey, think maybe you can make us all as invulnerable as you are now, Kat?" Grunge laughed.

"She probably could," Harry remarked, thinking it over. "In fact... your magic goes a long way toward explaining how it is that your Gen-Factor powers work, now that I think about it."

"What do you mean?" the redhead asked him.

"Kat, look at you," Harry gestured at her body. "You're a supermodel, you're strong enough to throw a multi-ton tank the length of _several_ football fields, and you're invulnerable to close-range explosions. The first two can be explained by the Gen-Factor increasing your muscle integrity and elasticity, but that last one? Unless you are unconsciously generating a psychokinetic field that terminates a few millimeters from your skin, it just doesn't make any sense! Physics dictate that, _at the least_ , you should have burns and massive internal hemorrhaging from being anywhere within five feet of a grenade blast, to say nothing of scratches from the shrapnel. You don't even get _bruised_ anymore, Caitlin. You may even have a regeneration factor, and that too could be attributed to the Gen-Factor. But back to your looks... have you even washed your face a day in your life, Kat?"

"Uh, well, I used to, when I was younger, but I stopped after... after high school," she admitted, blushing.

"You should, therefore, have the oiliest face right after Grunge, and more pimples than a steroid-popping body-builder," he pointed out. "Instead, it is like every single one of your pores stopped aging at the prime of their life. Your Gen-Factor regenerates your health, and your magic protects your body from the ravages of time and injury. You, Miss Fairchild, are the proverbial _Tank's Tank_. And I have made it my mission to teach you every single spell of protection and defense that this world, and many others, have to offer. Niko, got time for a quick lesson or two before you and Roxy head off?"

"No need," Niko declined. "In the course of our testing, I actually showed Caitlin here, every defensive spell that I personally know, and taught her the few others that I know of, but am unable to perform. It is how I know that she is in fact capable of Sorcery and Mystic magics. I think with enough practice and observation, she could even mimic that of a Natural-Born Witch's magical talent. If it were defensive or protective in nature, that is. Truly, quite remarkable."

The redhead was still blushing, and couldn't help crossing her arms across her body, like some blushing schoolgirl. It was interesting to note, as they all had yet to see their invincible second-in-command be truly embarrassed about anything. Roxy and Sarah both insisted that she was just unaware of how amazing she looked now, and Bobby tended to agree, as growing up 'ugly' through those awkward years can really leave a mark on somebody. Grunge and Harry both thought that she was actually an exhibitionist, even if she was still in the closet about it.

"It's still kind of early," Caitlin said, hoping to take attention off of her for a short while. "Why don't you stay for dinner? Anna is an amazing cook, by the way."

"Oh, yes, well, I imagine she is, being an android and all, it would be simplicity for her to merely download new recipes or... was it something I said?" Niko trailed off at everyone's stunned looks.

"..." Lynch casually remarked as scathing glares were sent his way. "Oh, did I forget to mention that?"

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Present Day_

 _Sunset_

In light of Harry's return, the whole 'family', such as it was, had dinner a bit earlier than normal and Anna had quite the time cooking up such a feast. Immediately after dinner, they all scattered to do their own things. Lynch called Harry into his office, Caitlin went to her room to study, and the others just lounged around or did whatever it is that relaxed them.

Coming out of Lynch's office, Harry spotted Grunge back to playing video games, sans Roxy this time, while Bobby was on the couch tuning his guitar. From the wards, he could sense Caitlin in her room, Anna in the kitchen, and Sarah in the sauna, but no sign of Roxy.

"Hey guys," he greeted upon entering the living room. "Where'd Roxy go?"

Bobby smirked and answered, "Got fed up with Grunge here and stormed out of the house."

Grunge, not taking his attention away from the video game for a second, shrugged and replied, "Probably headed downtown to one of the dance clubs. Or, y'know, the _Bronze_ , considering it's the only club in town. Don't sweat it, dude."

Harry scoffed and moved past them toward the stairs, intent on spending the rest of the evening in the privacy of his own room. He stopped mid-step, backtracked and did a double-take when Anna walked in with a tray of lemonades.

"Anyone for some freshly squeezed lemonade?" the blond maid inquired, ignorant of the sight right behind her that had frozen Harry in his tracks.

"I'll take one, Anna," Grunge called out, finally looking up from his game. As such, he too caught sight of what, or rather who, that had Harry so flabbergasted. "Hey, Sarah. Nice to see you..." It took a second, but Grunge's brain finally kicked into high gear as he processed what all his eyes were seeing, and he finished his statement with a choked gulp, "...guh— _NAKED_?!"

Indeed, Sarah Rainmaker was walking through the back half of the living room/downstairs from the hallway toward the open glass doorway leading to the back deck and the swimming pool. Naked. Stark naked. The only piece of cloth she had on her was a small red towel, draped appropriately across her neck, falling strategically over her chest. Her entire body was on full display, her smooth, flawless brown skin, tight over her feminine muscles, sweat and moisture from the steam of the sauna giving her a preternatural glow of health and beauty. Her legs and ass clenching and releasing with each, precise, delicate step that she took across the room. Her long, shoulder-length black hair falling in luxurious waves in a silken waterfall.

" _ **HELLL—**_ **!** " Grunge exclaimed, gripping his game controller so tightly that it actually snapped in half with a loud * _KRACK_ *! At the same moment...

"— _ **LLLOO**_ **!** " Bobby yelled, pulling a bit too hard and in the wrong way on one of his guitar strings, cutting it with a loud * _K-TANG_ *!

"Oy vey," Harry groaned, putting his hands over his eyes, although he would confess to peaking through his fingers, just a little bit.

Sarah stopped just inside of the patio doorway, actually posing as she stood there on the balls of her feet, like she was wearing high heels or something, one flawless leg straight while her other perfect limb was arched to show off the definition of her calves and thighs, while her tight tear-drop ass was cocked just so as to hint at what it hid without actually showing anything. Her back was arched, and unfortunately the towel covered what that might be doing with her bust, but the tight and well-defined muscles throughout her backside were on clear display, both from the moisture soaking her skin as well as the light of the setting sun splayed against her body. Looking back over her shoulder at them, she smirked and spoke to them before stepping out onto the back porch and toward the pool.

"Careful there, boys," she said impishly, "or you might break something really important. The three of you should try the sauna. The heat feels _delicious_. It reminds me of the sweat lodge back on the Reservation. And there's nothing better to complete the experience than a cool, refreshing dip in the pool." She called out right as she reached the edge of the deep end, removing her towel and revealing her perky, brown-tipped, c-cup breasts in all their magnificent native glory, "Anyone care to join me?"

Turning at the unexpected invitation, Anna gave an exclamation of her own, screeching, " _ **EEEP**_ **!** " as she dropped her tray of lemonades in shock. "Sarah Rainmaker!"

Rushing forward, actually standing in the patio doorway as though her body could somehow cover up Sarah's nakedness, the pixie-blond android admonished her, "What in the world do you think you're _doing_ , young lady?!"

Smirking, the brown-skinned example of female perfection raised her hands, much like professional Olympic divers sometimes did, and replied, "Just taking a quick dip in the pool before bedtime. Don't worry, Anna. I _do_ know how to swim." And then she dove in.

"Without a _bathing suit_?" the house-keeper/maid said incredulously.

"Her _birthday suit_ works just fine for me," Grunge said from Anna's right, eyes glued to the pool surface.

"Water looks a little _chilly,_ though, doesn't it?" Bobby remarked from Anna's left, refusing to blink.

"Oh my!" Anna gasped, covering her mouth in shame.

 _ ***SPLASH!***_

Sarah breached the surface of the clear pool, standing upright with the water only coming to just below her waist, fully demonstrating that yes, the water was indeed ' _chilly_ ', as well as the general fact that apparently Sarah Rainmaker shaves. Regularly.

"It's not as nice as the freshwater spring back home..." she said aloud, running her fingers over her soaked black locks, getting the hair out of her face, "...but it'll do. What's wrong, guys? Not afraid to get a little _wet_ , are you?" She gave them one final smirk before 'posing' again, looking right at the western horizon, allowing the dying light to glisten across her moistened body and make her look like the mermaids of myth, standing there in the shallow end. Right as the last of the sun's rays dipped below the horizon, she dove back underwater and did maybe two more laps before finally surfacing and walking out of the steps on the shallow end and finally accepting Anna's proffered—and quite insistent—towel. This one large enough to cover her entire body rather than just fit across her shoulders.

"Eyes back in their sockets, boys," Sarah said as she strode by them, back toward her room. "Don't expect a free show like that all too often. That was in celebration of our chief's return, as it were. Enjoy the show, Harry?"

"I didn't think I was your type, Sarah," Harry commented, from his position by the stairs as she went by.

"Doesn't mean I can't show my appreciation in... other ways," she mused, and ended the conversation by dropping the towel a few feet from her door and closing it only after she was sure he was still looking. He was also quite relieved to hear the sound of a lock clicking shut once the door was closed.

"Right," Harry said as he froze time around him. "Cold shower. Now!"

He raced up the stairs and only released his grip on time after it became apparent the shower wouldn't work at super speeds.

 _The Bronze_

 _Sunnydale, CA, Warehouse District_

Though its nightlife is not as avant-garde or fast-paced as that of Los Angeles, or even the border city of San Diego, Sunnydale has its own unique blend of after hours entertainment. For the younger set, there is the downtown warehouse district where they can find a limited variety of eateries, theaters, and the single, yet immensely popular night club known as the _Bronze_. Teens and college-age adults tend to make the nightly pilgrimage to the club for the same reason anyone goes to a night club.

Born with the grace of a ballerina and the kinetic energy of a fly-girl, Roxanne Spaulding looks upon the industrial discotheque as her own private refuge. It's a place to go when she wants to escape from all the personality conflicts and academic pressures at the villa, and simply enjoy the pleasures of being a free-spirited young woman, a place where she can forget about the responsibilities and risks of being one of the superhero team known as Gen13.

Roxy had transformed herself for a night out on the town, getting rid of the casual house wear she'd bothered with before, now displaying her body and her confidence with a light brown two-piece clubbing outfit; a pleated mini-skirt that sat low on her hips and high on her thigh, with a matching sleeveless formfitting scoop-neck belly shirt. She also had on her same black leather jacket that she'd had for like ever, steel-toed strapped work boots, and to complete the picture, her very own French black leather beret. It wasn't raspberry, but she was close enough that Prince himself would have trouble arguing the difference.

Nevertheless, Roxy soon found herself migrating to the dance floor and started looking for a distraction from her issues at "home" and dealing with a perverted boyfriend that was too ignorant to realize what he had in having a girlfriend like her... Nope! That is not why she's here tonight, she silently argued. She needed something to take her mind off her problems, something like, like...

... Like relishing the rapt attention of a dark and mysterious bystander.

Feeling his eyes upon her, Roxy puts on her own private show to the driving beat of the techno music, never considering the possibility that her mysterious admirer might very well have his own private agenda.

As her body and mind are swept away by the constant flood of music, Roxy quickly forgets about the stranger, and soon, all she wants to do... is dance...

" _HEY_!" An action brought to an abrupt and jarring end as she slammed right into the very stranger she'd been dance-flirting with moments before. "Oh... Hi!"

"Look, I'm really sorry about—" she tried to apologize the moment she realized who it was she had bumped into. It was kind of funny though, he wasn't much taller than her, and actually thinner than Harry, but if she didn't know any better, she would have sworn she'd walked right into Caitlin from how sturdy he felt.

"No harm done," he interrupted her apology, looking down at her through the bangs of his neck-length, stringy brown hair. He was remarkably pale, she noticed, even in the dark lighting of the club, dressed as so many of the others were in tight, dark, and leather clothing. "And apology accepted."

"I believe this hat belongs to you, Pretty Lady," he offered her the leather beret that had fallen off her head in their collision.

"Oh, yeah, my hat!" she smiled and flirtatiously ran her fingers through her bi-colored hair, accepting the accessory from him. "Thanks. Wow... You have the most... beautiful _eyes_..."

"Really?" he said casually, but staring intently into hers nevertheless. "Tell me what you _see_ in them."

"I... I feel... so strange..." she murmured, her eyes glazing over and staying still as he leaned in closer. He was totally going to kiss her, she thought. But why was he 'aiming' for her neck, and why was his aura such a funky color...

 _ ***SPLASH!***_

"Hey!" Roxy shouted, snapping out of the daze and jerking back from the tall, dark, mysterious stranger she'd been about to suck face with, when she felt something cold and wet start running down her back, and half her front.

"Whoa! Sorry about that!" the clumsy club-goer apologized upon seeing what he'd done.

Blinking, Roxy looked between him and her now soaked jacket, asking herself, "What happened?"

Seeing the inconsiderate jerk having already moved on, Roxy looked down at herself to assess the damage, subconsciously avoiding the stranger's intense gaze.

"Look at what he did to my _jacket_!" she exclaimed.

"Just..." Turning and looking for the restroom, she said as she departed the dance floor, "...hold on a sec. I'll be right back."

"I'll be waiting," he said, his intense, cold gaze tracking the young GenActive through the crowd.

Finding and securing herself in the Ladies restroom, Roxy took off her jacket and hurried to the sink to wash off the coke, or whatever the drink had been. Last thing she needed was for her best jacket and clubbing clothes to start smelling like she'd adopted Grunge's hygiene habits. While doing that, she stared at herself in the mirror and asked, "What's gotten _into_ you, girl? You come here to _relax_ and dance a little..."

She turned off the water and shook out the jacket, laying it out to dry for a bit.

"... But almost end up sucking face with some complete stranger!"

She was distracted by a flash of light, like lightning, that came through the window, reflected in the mirror, which is how she saw it in the first place. Mere moments after, if not simultaneous with the flash itself, there was a wall, floor, and ceiling shaking _BOOM_ of thunder.

"Yeow! Lightning!" the young teen yelped, jumping at the flash as much as the sound. "It must've hit somewhere close by."

All of a sudden, the lights went out and there were sudden shouts through the walls as the music cut out. "Uh-oh! The power's out!"

Going over to the window, curious to see if she could see exactly where or what had been struck by the lightning, she said to herself, "Just great! What _else_ can go wrong tonight?"

Unfortunately, despite not having lived there long, and in spite of Harry's many warnings about the place, Roxy was truly ignorant of the unwritten law that one should not tempt Fate, and _especially_ not Murphy when residing on the Hellmouth. They always listen, and they both take cruel delight in demonstrating exactly "what else" can be.

"Strange how that storm came out of nowhere and then just seemed to disappear like that," she mused, unable to see anything through the barred window, not looking as a small shadow skittered across the floor and dove into the folds of her now mostly dry jacket.

All of a sudden, the lights, power, and music came back on. The accompanying shout from the club-goers very nearly drowned out the resurgent beat of the sound system.

Smiling, Roxy raced to grab her jacket, never noticing the extra weight in her enthusiasm as she announced, "The lights are back! Time for me to get out of this bathroom..." she exited the swing-door with a flourish, swinging her jacket back on with a smooth motion, "... and back on that dance floor!"

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Same Time_

 _ ***BEEP!* *BEEP!* *BEEP!* *BEEP!* *BEEP!***_

 _-ATTENTION! THERE IS A CRISIS SITUATION!-_

 _-ATTENTION! THERE IS A CRISIS SITUATION!-_

 _-ATTENTION! THERE IS A CRISIS SITUATION!-_

"Eh?" John woke up from the noise coming from his computers. He'd fallen asleep on the couch in his office. Looking at the computer displays, he quickly read the situation. "The sensors have been activated. Computer deactivate voice-mode!"

 _-ATTENTION! THERE IS A CRISIS—*!_

Getting up and hurrying over to the sensor readouts, Lynch read the results out loud. "A magnitude _Alpha_ energy disturbance? In downtown Sunnydale? What is going on here?"

A few seconds to pull up and decipher the readings soon provided the answer. "Registered _four_ energy spikes. Wait, now there are four distinct _power signatures_ in the area. Looks like we're dealing with some heavy-hitters. Hold it!" He started and typed in a command to clarify the data being displayed. "There's a _fifth_ power signature in the same location. Registering as a GenActive?!" Checking the sensors for the house, he quickly confirmed who _wasn't_ present. "Shit, Roxy!" he realized.

"Mr. Lynch?" Caitlin's voice came from the door. Turning, he stared with his one good eye, seeing that she was dressed in her 'pajamas', a large white and red jersey shirt with the number 13 on it, and a pair of pink, french-cut panties, and little to nothing else. "The alarm woke us, but we can't find Roxy anywhere in the hou—"

"I've already found her," he interrupted, turning away from the sinful sight she presented with the hallway light shining behind her so the shirt was almost completely see-through. "Tell everyone to suit up, Caitlin. Something tells me she's going to need our help," he said even as he readied his own gear.

 _The Bronze_

 _POV: Freefall_

Being the Bouncer at the Bronze was a dangerous job. A _very_ dangerous job.

It also had an extremely high turnover rate. As a matter of fact, the owners were lucky if a bouncer lasted out the week. It was rare for the men hired to the position even lasted a full two weeks, and unheard of for the same Bronze Bouncer to last out the month!

Barney was on his eighth night, one of the lucky ones, and he knew it. He was saving up for a new car, and the hazard pay that came with this job would cover it, plus some if he could make it to two weeks. As such, when a group of shady, not to mention _inhuman_ , looking characters strode up, he had a decision to make. Do his job and turn away troublemakers, or do his best to survive.

There were four of them; a huge green-skinned guy with _three arms_ (the third was coming out of the middle of his back) dressed up like Colonel Trautman—if Trautman was the commando that couldn't leave the war behind, an alien in a spacesuit that looked like it came from the 1960s, a pale cyborg with _pink_ dreadlocks of all things and finger-claws that were each as long as his entire arm, and a woman that was wearing a red dress that had less material than a table cloth—fashioned like it was supposed to be a Chinese dress-tunic that only covered her 'assets' and torso while proudly displaying all the rest of her skin. Especially the dragon tattoo on her back. They were all heavily armed and openly carrying their weapons. The 'colonel-wannabe', smoking a cigar like the Colonel from A-Team for crying out loud, had a heavy energy rifle. The alien-in-a-space-suit had his own, smaller gun, but was actually holding a hand-held computer of some kind. The cyborg _was_ a weapon, while the lady dressed like a ninja from a fighting game held a spear rather than some kind of knife-fan.

Barney held up his hands to stop the three-armed mercenary from entering the club. Rather than give them some kind of excuse like "The club is full" or "No weapons" or even "No smoking", he instead just told them straight up, "Hold up. Look, nobody wants any trouble here. Keep the body count to a minimum, don't break down any walls, and don't start any fires. Also, bosses want to make it clear, you pay for any damages. Oh, and you're being recorded." He pointed to the camera over the entrance. "Keep that in mind, and we won't have any trouble." Then, without having any guns pointed in his face, Barney opened the door for the mercenaries and let them in.

"My kinda club," One-Eyed Jack remarked as he lead his crew into the building.

"Or not," he remarked upon seeing the occupants. "Bleeck! The creatures are an _ugly_ looking bunch! No offense, Jade."

"None taken," the barely-clothed warrior woman replied. "Their weakness _disgusts_ me! Makes me want to put them out of their collective _misery_."

"Cool it, Jade," Jack warned her. "No joy-killing norms on this job. We grab the Qeelocke and then we're _outta_ here!"

"Bu—but they... loo—look so—soft... an—and _juicy_!" the cyborg stammered.

"Shut up, Rake," he growled, his third arm raising his gun as he took a drag of his cigar, "or I'll have ya recycled again! Talk to me Hardball, what've ya got?"

"It's here all right, Boss!" the remaining demon reported. "We've got it this time!"

"Damn straight we do!" he crowed, speaking around his cigar now. "When _One-Eyed Jack_ is on the job, he sees it through to the end!"

All of a sudden Hardball's scanner started making loud meeping sounds, and the space-suited alien exclaimed, "I've got a lock on the Qeelocke, Boss!"

"According to my scanner..." he shouted, looking back and forth between his scanner and the crowd before pointing at the target, "...that female in the middle has got it!"

The quartet's appearance and shouting had drawn everyone's attention by now, and thus everyone heard and could see exactly _who_ Hardball was pointing at; Roxy.

"Who?!" she exclaimed, trying to display an 'innocent' air around her, "Me?!"

She didn't really feel like giving them the chance to reply, declaring, "That's it! I am out of here!" She triggered her powers and took to the air, aiming for the ceiling, counting on the club lights to mask her exact position until she could find a proper exit. "I've had enough excitement for one night!"

"Awesome!"

"Totally cool!"

"Wicked!"

"Whoa!"

"They must be making some movie here."

"Ugh, what a skank, I cannot believe she wore _that_!"

"Right, Slayers are one thing, flying Fae girls being hunted by demons with guns is another..."

Puffing on his cigar to fully appreciate it before having to put it out, One-Eyed Jack said to his team, "Well, look at what we got _here_! A _SuperGenic_ in the Neutral Zone. That makes her _fair game_ , boys! Good thing I always come prepared." He pulled out his heavy gun and cocked it with a loud _**kaCHAK**_!

Unfortunately for Roxy, the bright lights and the dark ceiling didn't seem to be much of a deterrent for the three-armed mercenary, as he began to shoot up the entire ceiling, using rather loud bullets, which exploded on contact at that. It was all she could do to flip, dodge, fly and avoid the lethal projectiles. Fortunately, it was also the signal that everyone needed to evacuate as quickly as they possibly could. Hey, it was the Bronze, it was 'taken over' several times a month, they all knew the drill by now.

"Who _are_ these freaks?" she asked to herself, even as she did a three-point gymnastic maneuver against the tiled ceiling, barely staying a few inches in front of the blasts. "And why are they after _me_?! … More importantly, why am I hanging out here like a sitting duck?"

"Time to find some cover!" After one sweep of the merc's gun came closer than she felt comfortable with, she angled her position and dropped faster than normal gravity could account for down to behind the bar at the back of the club. Didn't stop him from unloading the rest of his clip into the reinforced wooden barrier, but to everyone's equal surprise, was sufficient in protecting the GenActive.

"You... you've for—forced her... down!" Rake stammered, excited at the violence.

"Let's keep her there, Rake!" One-Eyed Jack ordered. "You and Hardball flank the bar and flush her out. Jade and I will take care of the rest."

"Bu—but you... ha—have all... the fu—fun!" the pink-dreadlocked cyborg whined.

Reloading his gun, the three-armed boss smirked at his underling and said, "Ya see, that's because _I'm_ the boss, as well as bein' the _brains_ o' this outfit! Now shaddup and just do what yer told!"

Behind the bar, Roxy was laid out as low as she could, ignoring the sticky mats she was having to lay on as well as whatever stains may be infecting her clubbing outfit. "This is unbelievable! I just wanted to _cut loose_ a little tonight," she grumbled quietly to herself, "not get _cut down_!"

She was interrupted in her panic-pity-party by a gentle squirming against her side, and a soft, " _Queep_?" noise from the same. Looking, she was stunned to see... see a... to see... y'know, she actually had no clue _what_ the hell it was.

"Hey! Where'd you come from?" she asked it. "Must've been hiding inside my coat!"

It was green, about the size and general shape of a small monkey, only it had cat-like ears, a face like a squirrel, not to mention its eyes were really weird, like red and pink and yellow all at once. Of course, that was nothing compared to the immense, yet contained aura the thing gave off. Roxy had the sense of looking into eternity itself. Suddenly, everything clicked in her mind.

"Stop the press!" she said to herself. " _That's_ why those mutant freaks are after me."

" _Vroot! Vroot!_ " the small green cat/squirrel/monkey seemed to agree.

Before she could really do anything with this, the clawed cyborg with pink dreadlocks and the alien-in-a-space-suit came around the corner at the end of the bar, weapons at the ready.

"Who... who you ca—calling a mu—mutant freak?!" Rake growled, flicking his 'finger-claws' so they went _snikt-snakt snikt-snakt_.

Backing away from the threats, Roxy scrambled back, ignoring the hint that she might be giving these two a free panty-shot at her white undies, she protectively kept the animal behind her as she tried to placate them, saying, "It was just a figure of speech, you know? Nothing personal!"

" _Queep_?"

"Give me the Qeelocke and I promise you a quick and painless death!" Hardball threatened. "Otherwise, it will be a slow and excruciatingly painful one."

"I don't suppose 'none of the above' is a choice?" Roxy whimpered, cowering before the two killers.

 _POV: Fairchild_

The five of them rushed into the nightclub, even as the last of the civilians were running out. Ideally, that would have left just them, their wayward teammate, and the enemy inside the building, but Caitlin quickly caught sight of a few employees and a handful of teens that hadn't been able to escape yet.

Fortunately, their team leader had seen the same things she had, and he quickly took charge.

"The last patrons have made it out of the club, Thundercrack," Rainmaker reported. "The area is secure."

"Mr. Lynch isolated the energy phenomenon to this specific site," Fairchild informed him, careful not to contradict her teammate. "We'll need to find the source, and hopefully Roxy."

"I'll do a quick sweep-thru to make sure of that, Rainmaker," Thundercrack said as he shifted his round glasses into their battle configuration, making them look more like rounded visors of the same glowing blue energy that was coming from the bottom of his metal boots. "Fairchild, you find Freefall, get her secured and stick with her. Everybody got their toys?"

Smirking, the redhead pulled out the slim, metallic baton from her thigh-holster. While handling it, the simple weapon morphed into a _morning-star_ mace. Months ago, when he'd picked them up in LA, Harry had promised that he'd gotten gifts for all of them. For himself, he got his frictionless equipment than let him run everywhere without having to worry about worn down shoes, or cleaning his glasses/goggles every two seconds when he couldn't dodge a bug in time. For the others, he got them... additional equipment that would help them better utilize their Gen Factor powers. For her, well, she got an unbreakable weapon that could transfigure itself into any single or two-handed melee weapon that she could possibly need. The impressive part of that was that it couldn't break. Not even her impressive strength could bend it when it wasn't supposed to bend.

"Oh yeah," Grunge grunted, fingering his 'utility belt', which had samples of every metallurgic alloy or element that could even remotely be useful in battle, allowing the tactile metamorph to adjust his molecules to be as fluid as putty, or harder than steel at a moment's notice.

"Shouldn't be too hard finding Roxy," Burnout commented, igniting his powers and taking to the air, although careful to keep away from the wooden supports or ceiling. "Look over towards the bar!"

"Can't say I'm too impressed with the company she's keeping," Grunge grunted, already morphing himself into either iron or steel, she couldn't tell in the club's low lighting.

"Orders stand," Thundercrack commanded. "I'll aid where I can, but my priority is securing the area. The rest of you, rescue Freefall and take those... visitors down." And then he vanished.

Fortunately, depending on your point of view, the noise they'd made coming in had drawn the four alien mercenaries' attention.

"Ye—Yes... mo—more of the—these special... ones!" the one called Rake stammered, turning around.

Grumbling, even as he held Roxy by the throat in one hand, his gun by his side in the other, he pointed angrily with another hand as One-Eyed Jack shouted, "They're really startin' to _bother_ me. _**Waste'em ALL!**_ "

"Good as done, Boss!" Hardball immediately complied, charging forward with Rake to meet Gen13 in battle in the middle of the Bronze.

Fairchild stayed back for a moment, taking in the entire situation before committing to any particular action. The handful of civilians and club employees that hadn't made it out yet were vanishing before her eyes one by one. Burnout was circling the ceiling, staying on the move so none of those with guns could get a bead on him, as well as confirming his limits inside the highly flammable building. Grunge and Rainmaker were both charging forward to meet the two adversaries rushing them, the short athletic half-Asian flipping overhead, while the Native American side-stepped and isolated the one opponent she had a clear advantage over.

Ignoring the commentary they were keeping up, Fairchild quickly decided how to best proceed. While Rainmaker dealt with the cyborg, she was unfortunately leaving her back wide open to the space-suited alien, which made her own opponent pretty obvious. Tapping the shorter, bulky figure on the shoulder, she spun him around forcefully, and said in a pleasant tone of voice, "Hi there!"

Then she punched him in the face, _through_ the face-plate of his Sixties-era spacesuit, and said in her best Will Smith impression, "Welcome to Earth!" as she knocked him out, slamming him in the chestplate with her 'bat' hard enough to crack something, just to be sure.

The little alien taken care of, and the other two occupied with Rainmaker and Grunge, Fairchild turned her attention toward the leader, the one that still held Freefall hostage. For the moment.

Burnout was staying close to the ceiling, narrowly dodging the blasts from the three-armed, one-eyed soldier shooting his laser guns, or whatever they were. After a lot of very impressive confined-aerobatics, Burnout got a line on him and took his shot, practically covering the green-skinned demon in flames, while avoiding any injury to Freefall. It was enough for the pixie-like diviner to wriggle her way free and join Burnout in the air and away from One-Eyed Jack.

Fairchild took that as her cue to step in.

"Be careful, Kat!" Freefall called out as she and her small passenger joined Burnout around the rafters. "That big one's their leader! He's _dangerous_!"

"Stay clear, Roxy! I'll be fine!" she ordered, moving in and snapping off a flawless high-kick to the three-armed demon's head right as the worse of the flames began to die off. "He's not the only one around here who's dangerous. _Especially_ when my foot can reach his _chin_!" She did a quick roundhouse kick to said chin, sending him flying, while she privately hoped that everything was 'covered' as she essentially did vertical splits.

" _ **HUUNGH!**_ "

The demon groaned as he struggled to get to his feet, looking a bit punch-drunk in his attempts, not that it would make much difference as Fairchild refused to allow him the chance to catch his bearings. It might be looked at as unfair or unsportsmanlike, but this wasn't some kind of duel or martial arts bout. This was a real, bloody, knuckle-brusing, bone-breaking _fight_!

Rushing the green-skinned demon, Fairchild started punching him in the head and across the face, repeatedly and refusing to let up for even a second. Taking full advantage of her melee weapon, she only held back in as much so he wouldn't go flying across the room so she didn't have to keep chasing him to keep hitting him. His third arm, the one coming out of his back, tried to strike back, but she saw it coming and didn't hesitate. She moved forward at a blistering speed, headbutting him in the process as she performed a flawless scorpion kick to block and parry the blow, even as she body-checked him by morphing her weapon into a solid round shield and hitting him in the sternum with it. She then spun backwards and did an inverted jump kick flip, straight out of a video game!

He tried to bring his guns to bear, but she moved too quickly for him, chopping at all three of his wrists, numbing them and making it so he was unable to hold any of his many weapons. She then went back to using him as her personal punching back. By the time Sarah fried Rake and Grunge shouted out for her, One-Eyed Jack was pretty much out of the fight, only staying up right because she was literally holding him.

"Yo, Kat! The ninja babe is buggin' out!" she heard Grunge shout.

Picking up the moaning Rake while still holding Jack with just her other hand, she replied, "She's smart enough to know when the odds are stacked against her." The green and purple clad amazon regarded the portal Jade was in the process of escaping through. "But just in case she's feeling a little lonely..." Fairchild then threw both of her burdens through the portal as hard as she possibly could. "... Let's give her some _company_! Stand clear, everyone!"

"KAT! NOOooo... _*****_!"

 _POV: Grunge_

The moment they entered the club, Grunge immediately sought out the position and status of his girlfriend. He knew he'd pissed her off earlier, and he knew that she'd only come here because she needed to blow off some steam and cool off. In short, he knew that her being in this situation was entirely his fault.

He was working on it. Honest.

So, when the three-armed, one-eyed jackass gave the order to "Waste'em all!" Grunge was probably the only one of the team paying close enough attention to see the tears in Roxy's eyes as she gasped out through the hand around her throat, "Nn— _no_! They're—mm—my—friends—* _gasp*_!"

"Not anymore, Kid!" One-Eyed Jack said in her face, his right arm holding her by the throat. "They're gonna be dead meat, after my posse's finished with'em!"

Grunge had seen enough and couldn't stand another moment of just standing around. He charged forward, screaming, "Hang on, Rox! The _cavalry's_ on its way!"

He barely even acknowledged the two freaks out front, using a brief, silent and nigh-invisible _kekkai_ to help boost him higher as he did a rolling flip over their grab for him.

"Guh...Gotcha—huh?!" Rake exclaimed, having expected to have grabbed and impaled the mad-dashing Grunge on his cybernetic talons.

"Where'd he go?!" Hardball asked, stunned.

" _BANZAI, BABY!_ " Grunge cried out as he sailed over the two alien mercenaries.

Unfortunately, despite the extra air his magic trick had given him, it hadn't given him the distance needed to clear all three and make it to Roxy. Thus, he landed on his feet with a loud _'thumph'_ practically right in front of the scantily clad ninja-babe known as Jade. Of course, being Grunge, he couldn't help but comment on this.

"Whoah!" he called out upon seeing his new opponent. "Baby Alert! Now, what's a hot chick like _you_ doing with these ugly losers?"

Smirking, she brandished her double-ended laser-sharpened spear while answering, "Out to make a King's Ransom by retrieving the Qeelocke and _expunging_ the lives of you and your friends!"

"Sheeaah!" Grunge scoffed. "Time for a reality check there, babe."

She replied by moving almost as fast as Thundercrack, whacking him upside the head, "Well, I guess that means..."

" _ **UNGH!**_ "

"... I'll just have to..." she thwacked him with the other side of her spear, sending him reeling.

" _ **AARGH!**_ "

"... _convince_ you!" She completed the maneuver by ducking low and swiping his legs out from under him with her fully extended left leg, coming back up into the same position she had started in, still holding her spear at the ready.

" _ **HUUNGH!**_ "

"Real enough for you now, _babe_?" she mocked him.

"Duuh..." Grunge groaned, having absolutely had his clock cleaned. "Look at all... the pretty girls! You know... I think she really _likes_ me..."

Fortunately for the overwhelmed beach bum, his particular Gen-Factor was almost as good as the best Healing Factors around, and he managed to recover his senses enough to fully appreciate the mercenary standing over him with her spear pointed right at his chest.

"Your fighting skills are _pathetic_ , Boytoy," she said. "But I do like your tattoo. And you are kind of cute... in a _stupid_ sort of way—"

"You don't really think I've been trying, do you?" he interrupted her with a smirk. "I've just been _playing_ with you, _Dragonlady_. See, I've got this thing for _really strong_ women—" He cut himself off as her expression morphed into one of raw anger and feminine indignation.

"Insolent pup!" she screamed down at him, raising her spear overhead to deliver a full-force killing blow. "This is no _game_! It's a _pity_ I'll have to destroy that lovely tattoo when I _slice_ you open!"

There was a brief— _very_ brief—stutter throughout the world right as Jade swung her spear down at Grunge's unprotected chest. It was in the moment after that stutter that he was found to have brought his hands together and _caught_ the edged blade of her spear, holding it tight and with enough strength to fully stop her attack.

" _Mess_ with my _Tattoo_?!" Grunge roared from the ground, triggering his powers and transforming his body into an almost liquid-metal form that was the same material as the spear he now held. "Think _again,_ _ **BEEYUCH**_!"

Pushing back, he gave himself enough space to at least get to his knees, and also driving her off-balance slightly. "Wha—What're you doing?!" she cried out, surprised.

"Just bonding the molecules in my body with the ones in your spear..." he answered, grunting slightly as he adjusted his stance from just 'on his knees' to a _seiza_ sitting stance. "... so that I can do..." He then hefted and using the superior leverage of his bonded molecules, lifted and threw the double-ended spear back and across the room. "... _THIS_!"

Of course, Jade was one that had been trained to _never_ relinquish one's weapon, so she ended up being hefted and thrown alongside her weapon. "Waa— _ **AAIIIEEEEEE**_! OW!"

Grunge reverted back to his default and got to his feet, ready to continue the fight, seeing that Burnout and Fairchild had freed Freefall at this point. Besides, he wanted to get a closer look at the woman's own tattoo, maybe compare notes...

Jade, likewise, got to her feet and was prepared to finish things once and for all. Yet, one particularly flashy and violent display from Rainmaker and Rake's bout brought them both up short. In seeing the cyborg left sizzling on the ground, Hardball with his face plate smashed in and One-Eyed Jack actually _losing_ his fight with the amazonian redhead, and not counting how outnumbered they now were, the alien ninja-babe decided a tactical retreat was in order.

"Well done, my dear!" she called out to Rainmaker, who wasn't exactly walking away from her fight unscathed at the least. "Rake had that coming to him. This day is yours, children! But be rest assured..." she turned and used her blade to tear open another portal, the violet tear in space making the same 'blown-power-transformer' sound that it had upon their arrival. "... the battle is _far_ from over!"

"YEOH, Kat!" Grunge called upon seeing the new development. "The ninja babe's buggin' out!"

 _POV: Rainmaker_

Rake stared hard at Rainmaker. In the wake of Grunge's 'disappearance', and Fairchild taking out Hardball with essentially one hit, all that left him for a target was the red-and-green-dressed dark skinned beauty. Swishing his bladed fingers against one another as he inspected her, he couldn't help drooling a bit as he stuttered out his challenge.

"Ye—Yes... you do... loo—look like... a tasty tre— _treat_!" he stammered.

"Do tell," the Apache warrior said, activating the modified Amp-Bands that Harry had gifted her with a few weeks back. "It's a pity your _personality_ and _looks_ aren't nearly as keen as those nine inch nails of yours, Rake. This might've taken me longer than a few minutes otherwise."

"Yy—you... _dare_ to... mm— _MOCK_ me?!" he growled out, no longer drooling. "J—just for that... I—I'm going... to skin... yy—you _alive_!" He rushed forward, exactly as he had when charging Grunge, slashing out with his cybernetic talons.

"That's it!" Rainmaker easily saw the move coming and acted accordingly. "Let the anger..." Where Grunge could gain a boost by using a kekkai as a platform, something that she had indeed noticed about her teammate's move earlier, she had to rely on her natural athleticism and training. "... cloud your judgment..." Fortunately, while nowhere near Olympic-level, Rainmaker had no problem using him as a vault-table, flipping over him while simultaneously getting in a hard hit to the back of the cyborg's neck and knocking him down while she landed, arms spread to maintain balance. "... so I can get behind you..." She then spun on the spot and shot a full-power long-range lightning blast at the cyborg, frying his circuits, and making his already wild and untamed pink hair go even more crazy. "... and do _this_!"

"My electrical charges used to be just _painful_ ," Even as he lit up, she couldn't help commenting, "but now with these new powerbands, they're supposed to be quite _excruciating_!"

" _ **YEARGH**_!"

"What do you think?" she asked.

Getting fully back to her feet, Rainmaker prepared to finish the cyborg off so she could move on to helping Roxy. Unfortunately, it would seem she had underestimated her opponent as he shook off the electric shock a lot sooner that she'd expected him to.

"Is... th—that the... bb—best you... c—can do?! Hahahaha!" Rake taunted her.

He then moved in faster than she had expected, slashing and swiping with his sharp cybernetic talons, not letting up for a moment. It was all Rainmaker could do to stay ahead of him, ducking at first, and then rolling to the side and using her athleticism and superior agility to stay _just_ out of his reach. Her mind was racing, trying to understand why her attack hadn't been effective. Harry had promised that her new power-amplifying bands would allow her to unleash ten times the amount of power than the ones provided to her by Project Genesis and Lynch. And that did seem to be the case, as the cyborg had definitely been affected. But...

Suddenly, it clicked for her. If only she hadn't stopped moving at the moment her epiphany had struck her, perhaps she might've been able to dodge Rake's next slash.

" _ **AARGH!**_ "

Grabbing her shoulder where he'd cut her, she winced at the pain briefly as she did a quick assessment on the wound. It wasn't fatal, provided she could stop the bleeding soon enough, and prayed to the goddess that this half-robot creep didn't poison his talons, or worse go around never washing or sanitizing them. Most forms of bacteria were infinitely worse than the most potent poison imaginable.

"I... I bet... that hurts!" Rake mocked her

"Not as much as having to look at _you_ ," she taunted, making sure to stand her ground. Behind him, she saw his female partner (hot as she was to look at she was still the enemy, Sarah reminded herself) go flying thanks to a simple trick by Grunge. She planned her own simple trick to likewise end this fight as quickly as she could. After all, everyone knew the basics of electrical physics, the further an electrical charge has to go through a non-conductive medium, the less of a charge it will have.

"Th—then I'll just... have to... po—poke out... your _eyes_!" Rake screamed in a rage, blindly leaping forward.

"That's it," Rainmaker smirked, ready for him. "Get in close!"

She ducked down and grabbed his over-extended cybernetic arm with her injured arm, holding tight to the _conductive_ metal running throughout the appendage. "Now you're _mine_!" she crowed.

"A... t—trick! _NOOO_!" he screamed.

Rainmaker wasted no time in grabbing his other flailing robotic talon with her other hand, completing the circuit and unleashing every last volt of power that her powerbands could pour into the helpless cyborg.

* _ **KRRUNCH***_

 _ ***ZZAAAP***_

 _ ***SSZZAAKT***_

" _ **GEGEGEGEGAAAHHHH!**_ "

There were a few electrical snaps, a few crackles as his fuses blew, and then a very loud pop as he finally lost the battle and the last of his systems fried. She allowed him to drop to the ground, softly sizzling in the cool air-conditioned space of the room. She imagined the only reason he wasn't already a burned corpse was that there wasn't enough _meat_ left in him to be microwaved in such a way.

Turning away, Rainmaker quickly applied a healing spell to her arm to stem the bleeding. She'd need to disinfect it sooner rather than later, but at least she wouldn't be passing out from blood loss.

"Your claws may be fearsome weapons, Rake," she said over her shoulder to the still-sparking cyborg, "but they're no match against the fighting spirit of an _Apache Warrior_."

 _POV: Burnout_

Burnout was just glad that whoever built (or kept rebuilding) the Bronze made sure to use fireproof insulation at every point of the building process. He'd almost been afraid that one wrong move on his part, and Freefall would be needing to find a new dance club to frequent.

Already in the air the moment they were through the door, he'd instantly spotted their wayward teammate and let the others know. "Look over towards the bar!"

"Can't say I'm too impressed with the company Roxy's keeping," Grunge mumbled, fists clenched.

"Orders stand," Thundercrack commanded. "I'll aid where I can, but my priority is securing the area. The rest of you, rescue Freefall and take those... visitors down." And then he vanished.

Burnout wasted no time in gaining altitude, giving them the high ground. Apparently, the other side agreed that the high ground was important and refused to allow it to them as those of the group able to fight long range immediately started firing at him, forcing him to dodge, bob and weave between the rafters while keeping an eye on the floor so he couldn't be blindsided by ground fire. As such, he missed most of what was going on with the others, but he couldn't help keeping an eye out for one teammate in particular.

"Way to go, Sarah!" he called out when she struck down her cyborg opponent with a mid-range lightning strike. Unfortunately, he then had to do a rapid figure-eight and a few loops through triangular rafters to avoid weapons fire.

The three-armed jackass holding Freefall, apparently, only needed one hand to keep choking her, and thus his other two were free to wield some of the many weapons he carried on his person. Until, that is, right after he'd shot at Burnout, they all disappeared, even the grenades, but especially the two guns in his hands. Seeing his opportunity, he dove down before shooting back up to get at the right angle and shouted out a warning even as he unleashed a full-force flaming plasma blast.

"Now it's _my_ turn," he called out. "Heads up, Roxy! Plasma Burst _incoming_!"

" _ **AARGH!**_ " One-Eyed Jack now had a face full of flames.

"Aces!" Freefall cried out in glee. "Direct hit, Burnout!"

" _Queep_?" the small green-furred monkey in Freefall's arms queried.

"That means we are _out of here_!" she translated, using her gravity powers to escape One-Eyed Jack's grasp and get away from the fighting. Turning when she saw Fairchild move in to finish the mercenary off, she warned her, "Be careful, Kat! That big one's their leader! He's _dangerous_!"

"Stay clear, Roxy!" the redhead replied, even as she kicked the sense out of him. "I'll be fine! He's not the _only_ one around here who's dangerous. Especially when my foot can reach his _chin_!"

Burnout quickly turned away, and subtly made sure that Grunge was thoroughly distracted from Fairchild's unexpected display of her camel-toe issues.

"Who, or should I say _what_ is that, Rox?" Burnout asked as they both floated nearby the sound system.

"I'm not sure," she admitted. "They kept calling it a... Qeelocke, wasn't it?"

" _Queep!_ "

"Right, Qeelocke," she nodded. "Think Harry will let me keep him?"

Burnout just shrugged.

They both turned, however, when Harry appeared right below them, screaming, "KAT! NOOOoo...*!"

 _POV: Thundercrack_

He already knew what this was before they even left the Villa. He knew who they'd find there, and he could accurately picture the image of Roxy's condition by the time they got to her. Rather than waste time using some _identifiable_ vehicle of one sort or another, they merely daisy-chained themselves together as Harry essentially stopped time and Kat more or less ran them there. Still, they didn't get to the Bronze until a full fifteen minutes after the alarms had gone off back at the villa.

They needed to work on their response time.

As it was, the Bronze was nearly fully evacuated, and Roxy had not only encountered the villains, but had already been captured by them. Once they were through the door, however, he no longer had time to brief everyone on the threat.

"The last patrons have made it out of the club, Thundercrack," said Rainmaker. "The area is secure."

"Mr. Lynch isolated the energy phenomenon to this specific site," said Fairchild. "All we have to do now is find the source and, hopefully, Roxy."

"I'll do a quick sweep-thru to make sure of that, Rainmaker," Thundercrack said, shifting his glasses to battle configuration, and securing his gauntlets and boots briefly. "Fairchild, you get to Freefall and stick with her. Everybody got their toys?"

"Shouldn't be too hard finding Roxy," Burnout said as he took to the air. "Look over towards the bar!"

"Can't say I'm too impressed with the company Roxy's keeping," Grunge said.

"Orders stand," Thundercrack ordered. "I'll aid where I can, but my priority is securing the area. The rest of you, rescue Freefall and take those... visitors down." It took everything he had to avoid using the word 'demons'.

Alpha Energy Signature meant dimensional breech. On the Hellmouth, that means exactly one thing. On top of _that_ , he'd taken a glance at the specific energy signature and unfortunately recognized it. He still hadn't told everyone about _all_ his side-missions whilst hunting down and capturing Faust, and for good reason too. They weren't ready for demons, not yet. They absolutely were not ready for _Damocles_ and his ilk!

This had to be handled very delicately. Before that though, he needed to get the group of teens on the top floor out of here, along with the five employees stuck behind the counter. That was another thing they needed to work on, Rainmaker's observation skills.

Thundercrack accelerated and ran to get the employees first.

Simply because they were first and closest, not because he was some kind of chauvinist, he grabbed the two waitresses at the end of the bar by the arms and 'froze' them, making them little more than statues and from their point of view making it look like they'd been teleported outside or something. He made sure to 'unfreeze' them before letting go of their arms and racing back inside the club.

By the time he had the bartender un-wedged from the corner he'd buried himself in, the rest of the team had fully engaged the enemy. Fairchild was putting the space-suited demon down for the count, Burnout was doing some impressive aerial acrobatics amongst the rafters while he dodged gunfire from the three-armed demon holding Freefall, while Rainmaker was squaring off against the cyborg, and Grunge was getting his ass handed to him by the scantily-clad woman (whom registered as a mage to his senses, although he had his doubts). Thundercrack _might_ have interfered on behalf of his teammate, but said teammate was avoiding the lethal blows, and honestly his ego needed the deflating.

At the point he returned from transporting the two kitchen staff away, the battle had progressed little. Grunge was on the floor, Rainmaker had discovered the downsides to a long-range lightning strike, Fairchild's opponent was on the ground not moving, and Burnout was in the midst of dodging more gunfire from the demon holding Roxy. Glancing towards the balcony, Thundercrack could no longer see the civilians that he'd initially spotted up there, so he just hoped that meant they'd taken their cue to cut and run finally.

Taking that as his own cue, he accelerated himself to the very limit of what he could withstand and headed straight for One-Eyed Jack. As strong as the demon was, and as tight a grip he had on his weapons, one would think that no matter how fast the young hero was moving, or how slow his stationary target was staying, there should've been no way for Thundercrack to get those guns away from One-Eyed Jack. But then, they weren't taking into account his ability to 'freeze' people, or decelerate them to the point of immobility and a complete lack of awareness of the passage of time. This frozen state allows their body, posture, almost anything physically about them to be manipulated as though they were a mere mannequin. The only noticeable difference is that the whole world seems to 'stutter' whenever this is done.

At least, that is what Thundercrack has been told by those that he used his 'freeze' touch on, being unable to experience it himself.

Rather than release Freefall himself, or just leave the demon mercenary frozen, Thundercrack only permitted himself to the limit of removing all of his weapons. Yes, he could have taken down all four of these mercs himself, and rescues all the civilians, and yes, he could probably single-handedly defeat each and every threat he was to ever come across. But that was more work than he was willing to deal with, and his ultimate goal wasn't to _be_ the Hero everyone looks to, but to be part of a _team_ that _could_ back him up when he needed them to. He wasn't going to do all the work for them, but he would help them out. Such as removing the thug's weapons so Burnout could get a shot in. Or sometimes by helping more directly.

Glancing over at the prone Grunge on the floor, about to be skewered by Jade's blade, he ran over and briefly 'froze' her while 'accelerating' Grunge into his time frame.

"Need any help?" Thundercrack asked mockingly.

"Dude, I got this!" Grunge insisted. "Put me back. Although..."

Thundercrack released his perverted teammate before he could actually hear whatever depraved suggestion was about to leave his lips. He then moved the blade 'back' up a few more inches before un-'freezing' Jade and stepping back to see how things played out from here.

As it turned out, Grunge indeed 'had it' as he caught the blade between his hands and instantly bonded his molecules with its, allowing him to disarm and disable the ninja mercenary. A quick look around confirmed the fight was all but over now, as Rainmaker finished off Rake, and Fairchild was tossing Jack around like a rag doll at this point. Doing one final sweep-thru at full speed, he joined Burnout and Freefall up on the stage, even if the two of them were still hovering over it by half a meter. He then decelerated back to regular time and watched the final scene play out.

"Well done, my dear!" Jade called out to Rainmaker, retrieving her blade. "Rake had that coming to him. This day is yours, children!" Thundercrack frowned, he did _not_ like the sound of it, further confirmed when the woman opened up a _portal_ right there inside the club! "But be rest assured, the battle is _far_ from over!"

"Yo Kat!" Grunge called out, "The ninja babe's buggin' out!"

Hefting Rake and One-Eyed Jack in either hand over her head, every muscle of her core and arms straining within the confines of her tight green and purple costume, Fairchild replied, "She's smart enough to know when the odds are stacked against her. But just in case she's feeling a little lonely," she hefted and threw both her burdens through the open portal, "let's give her some _company_! Stand clear, everyone!"

"Shit, shit, shit!" Thundercrack cursed as he jumped off the stage and ran forward to stop her. Unfortunately, he'd neglected to activate his powers first. "KAT! _NO_!" But he triggered them now, creating an odd doppler-effect that he wasn't immediately aware off. He _ran_ as hard and as fast as he could _through_ the portal, unsurprised to find himself in a military-like facility on what most would call a hellish nightmare-inducing parody of Earth, but he knew was merely just one of the many hell dimensions connected to his world via the Hellmouth. Jade had been standing right in front of the portal, and (as intended) been knocked down when Rake and One-Eyed Jack came flying through.

Time didn't seem to be frozen on this side of the portal, but that was an easy fix as he merely accelerated himself once again and time, accordingly, stopped to his eyes. He grabbed Rake first and threw him back through the still-open magenta-hued portal. Then he picked Jade up, got a 'running start' and 'threw' her at the portal, making sure to let go at the appropriate point so that, while she _would_ go back through it, there would be a second or two delay, allowing him to drag the _much heavier_ three-armed demon through it at the same time.

Five minutes hard work later (from his perspective), and he and the team of demon mercenaries were back on Earth and in the Bronze, and the portal closed on its own. Harry made sure to personally knock out Jade and remove her weapon from her reach. He was (more than he was willing to admit to) tempted to do a more involved search of her person, to see if there were potentially any other devices capable of permitting them escape, but he settled for putting them all in conjured cuffs and other improvised manacles plus an _Incarcerous_ spell, or four, each.

"Harry, wha—what are you doing?" Fairchild demanded.

"I don't have a problem with them leaving, Kat," he said, having finished with tying the four of them up. "I just want it to be on _our_ terms, not theirs. Stopping them is all well and good, but keeping crap like this from ever happening again is better."

The team all congregated around him, listening (for once), and keeping their guard up. And then Grunge asked, "So... now what?"

Taking a deep breath, Thundercrack turned his white-blue-glowing gaze down upon their prisoners with a frown. "Now you lot get to see a side of me that you haven't yet. And _all of you_ will keep quiet and stay out of my way. All I'll tell you now is that I won't kill them. But if you speak out against me in the next few minutes, this won't work and we'll have to actually turn them over to the Justice League... or the _government_."

They all shivered at that last word. They were, after all, still, sort of, on the run _from_ the government.

" _Ennervate_ ," he cast the spell to revive them.

"Ooohh, that's a wake-up call," One-Eyed Jack groaned. Then he noticed their predicament. "What the...? Whoever did this, when I get my hands on them—!"

Harry punched him across the face. _Hard_. A tooth might've been knocked loose.

"Hi," he said. "Name's Thundercrack. I'm the one that tied you lot up. My team are the ones that beat you all senseless beforehand. They almost let you go. I decided not to."

"Big man," Jack mocked. "Having his people do the grunt work while he takes the credit. I can respect that. Yer still a pussy, but you've got some balls on ya. Why don't you take off these restraints and I'll show you how a real leader fights, huh?"

"But then I'd be forced to kill you, and then who would deliver my message?" he replied. "The girl isn't in your chain of command, and would be disregarded, and it is really hard to take these two seriously about anything. So no, I'm going to leave you tied up, talk for a bit, and then I'm going to send you back to your home the painful way."

"Wh—what... meh—message?" Rake stammered.

"You're... letting us go?" Hardball asked, too scared to be hopeful.

Thundercrack stood back up and held Jade's bladed weapon before him in his hands. "Nice," he said. "I recognize the material. Sword uses some of it in his own weapon, doesn't he?"

They all paled, or whatever demonic equivalent applied to feeling an unnatural amount of shock and sudden fear.

"Who's sword?" Grunge asked in the background.

"The Sword of Damocles," Thundercrack answered over his shoulder. "Right-hand man slash enforcer for a demon lord named Damocles. Nasty piece of work. Really hates people that fail him." He knelt down so he was eye-to-eye with One-Eyed Jack. "You or your people ever come back to this world, for _any_ reason, I'll make sure that he finds out about this particularly epic failure of yours. Be sure to mention my name in his presence, even once, and just watch what happens. It is in _your_ best interest if you say that you were anywhere _but_ here on this mission, _Jack_."

Legilimency rocked.

"Nice bluff," the demon scoffed. "But I think you're just too scared to face me."

"You couldn't beat my second-in-command," Thundercrack laughed, indicating Fairchild. "What makes you think that you can beat me?"

Before he could answer, the world stuttered around One-Eyed Jack and his flunkies, and the next thing they knew, they were trussed up, hanging from the ceiling, in the middle of some kind of pentagram magic circle painted onto the floor beneath them. Thundercrack was standing there, in front of them and outside the circle, smirking at them. "Oh, and I can stop time."

"What is this?!" Jade demanded, looking nervously down at the circle. "What are you doing?!"

"What I said I'd do," the wizard speedster replied. "I'm sending you home. The painful way. Ladies?"

He stepped back and Rainmaker and Fairchild stepped closer on either side of the magic circle.

"Are you _sure_ about this?" Rainmaker asked for the dozenth time. At least she'd kept her voice down so the mercenaries couldn't hear her.

"It is a simple transport spell," Thundercrack insisted. "The only thing 'dark' about it, is the destination we're sending these creeps to. And that is what we have Fairchild for. Keep up the purity-protection spell until after the pentagram vanishes, all right?"

The redhead silently nodded her head, keeping most of her focus on her task for the moment.

"Fine," Rainmaker sighed, and began casting the spell. Sixteen lines of Latin later, whilst Fairchild provided counterpoint with steady chanting of her own spell, and a fiery pit opened up beneath the demon mercenaries, extending tendrils of flame to draw them down to the depths below.

"One last thing," Right before they, and the pentagram with them, vanished, the leader of Gen13 called out, "Remember to deliver my message! Stay off our world! Or _else_!"

And then they were gone, along with any evidence of a dimensional portal spell being cast, beyond a slight scorch mark on the floor that is.

"So, who wants tacos?" Grunge asked.

" _Queep_?"

"What was that?" Harry deadpanned.

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Next Morning_

"Good work tonight, everyone," Mr. Lynch said. "From what I understand, you all worked together efficiently and covered each others weaknesses while playing to your strengths. What's more, you got out of there before the local authorities arrived."

"Everyone did their part for the team, Mr. Lynch," Caitlin dutifully reported.

"And we followed Harry's lead," Bobby pointed out.

" _Queep?_ "

"Oops!" Roxy called out as the small green 'monkey' escaped her grasp and jumped up on Lynch's head while wrapping itself around his face. "Hey, come back here!"

" _Queep?_ " the creature called a Qeelocke seemed very much like the small pet monkeys one would see on television or in the movies, looking at everything curiously, while treating it all with a healthy dose of caution and fear. Seeing everyone in the room defer to this man made it believe this was the Alpha and instinct demanded it beg for protection from the Alpha of any group it wanted to be a part of.

"Err... Roxanne. If you'd please..." Lynch indicated for her to remove the small creature from his face.

"Sorry about that, J.L." she apologized. "Come here, Qeelocke!"

"It's... _Mr. Lynch_ , Roxanne," the man near-growled as the Qeelocke was peeled from him.

"Oh, right! Whatever you say, Mr. L," she replied, most of her attention back on cuddling her new pet.

"I've never seen a creature like that one before," Caitlin said, looking down at it in Roxy's lap. "You decided to name it 'Qeelocke'?"

"That's what those goons were calling it," Roxy said. "'Sides, it sounds kind of cute."

"That creature may be more dangerous than we realize," Lynch said, glaring down at it, arms crossed.

"Cheep? Geep? Jeep?" Grunge knelt down next to Roxy's chair, trying to 'talk' to the animal. "Queep? Hey! It likes me!"

" _Vroot! Vroot!_ " the Qeelocke seemed to chirp as it grabbed Grunge's wandering finger and forced him back while snuggling closer into Roxy's chest, proving once and for all that however alien an animal it was, it was still more intelligent than Grunge.

"Do you really think so, Mr. L?" Roxy asked, ignoring the byplay between her boyfriend and pet.

"If those intruders were willing to kill you to capture it," Lynch said, "you can be sure we haven't heard the last of them."

"Which is why I didn't let Kat just throw them back home without a care," Harry said upon entering the room, carrying a rather hefty leather-bound book in his arms. "They won't be coming back here. But just to be on the safe side, we should make sure they don't have a _reason_ to risk it either. And seriously, Rox? You're habit of naming people by what they are is starting to worry me."

"What are you talking about, Wizard?" Roxy blurted out, offended. "When have I ever... uh, oh yeah." She trailed off at his glare. "Sorry."

"And furthermore, you can't keep him," he said, indicating the Qeelocke.

"What? Why not?" she screeched, holding the green-monkey close.

"Several reasons," he said, opening up the book. "The most pertinent being that this world _isn't_ his home. At first glance, I figured him for some offshoot or hybrid of clabbert. Except he doesn't have horns or the glowing warning light on his head. Plus, there is the whole reason for why those mercs wanted it in the first place. Qeelocke? Key, Lock? Put those two words together, one automatically thinks of doors, which means he has the power to transport or at the least open doorways, and given their own abilities at the time, I would be willing to wager on _multi-dimensional_ doorways at that. So, I started looking at _foreign_ magical creatures, and found this." He turned the book around so they could all see the content.

" _Queep? VROOT! VROOT!_ " the little alien got real excited upon seeing for himself.

"Qeelocke here is from the Negative Zone, as the general public like to call it," Harry explained. "Wizards and mystics, however, like to call it Ledgerdomain, or at the very least an off-shoot from there. Near as the records tell, these creatures use our world, our universe really, as some kind of... mating ground. Because when these... creatures get in the mood, well, things tend to get... messy."

"Dude," Grunge grunted approvingly.

"Ew, gross," Roxy shoved at her boyfriend.

"By messy, you mean...?" Caitlin asked.

"Everything around them, not to mention anything between a mating pair, gets destroyed," he answered.

"And they do this _here_?!" Sarah exclaimed.

"Well, keep in mind that three-quarters of this planet _is_ covered by sea water, and only four hundred years ago, this continent was mostly raw wilderness with nothing but nomadic tribes as far as sentient life was concerned. From the descriptions, I'd say this one is still a young adolescent, maybe pre-adolescent. He needs to be sent back to his dimension, not kept here as a pet."

"But..." Roxy whined. "He likes me! See?"

"So do puppies," Bobby snapped.

"So did that ghost boy from the frat house," Harry reminded her.

Grunge frowned and without a word grabbed the Qeelocke from Roxy and held him outstretched. "Sorry Rox. We gotta do what is best for the little guy. Not for ourselves. If you want, we can get you a pet. We're all mystics, right? Doesn't that mean we get like familiars or something?"

"You're a diviner, Roxy," Harry gently reminded her. "Why don't _you_ tell _us_ what _Qeelocke_ here wants to do?"

Frowning, the bi-color-hair teen bowed her head to the inevitable. Lifting her head and opening her eyes, revealed her pupils were now whited out and glowing softly. Reaching out with one hand, she cast the prepared spell at the small creature, which glowed the same shade around its head for a moment before reverting to normal.

" _Que_ —what did you just do... to me? I... I can speak your language now?!" the small green-furred monkey said in a perfectly understandable voice, sounding kind of like some familiar-sounding voice actor they'd all heard recently.

"Whoa!" Grunge backed away, his eyes wide. "Whuddja do, Roxy?"

"It's a spell Tris taught me," she explained, sounding sad. "Basically, a universal translator spell. _If_ cast on a sentient being, that is. If... it were cast on, say, a wild animal, or even... a pet, the best you could hope for would be something like what you see from trained parrots. I... I thought... well, you said Harry, we should ask Qeelocke what he wants to do, right?"

Harry just silently nodded his head, keeping his peace for the moment.

"Thank you, Roxy is it?" Qeelocke spoke. "I appreciate this. It also makes matters somewhat... simpler. Yes, much simpler. I'm somewhat of a wanted individual back in my home dimension. You met the agents of the one seeking my... acquisition earlier tonight. And quite effectively dealt with them, if I may say so."

"You may," Sarah preened a bit, before turning serious in a heartbeat. "But what do you mean 'agents of'? Who exactly wants you?"

"Damocles," Harry and Qeelocke said at the same moment.

The wizard looked up at his team and sighed. "Damocles is the name of an individual who is, essentially, the lord and ruler over his dimension, which is classified as a demon realm, which... would, technically speaking, from a certain point of view, make him a... uh, um, well, a Demon Lord."

Sarah, Caitlin and Lynch all paled drastically. Bobby sat down and looked like he was trying not to puke. Roxy and Grunge, of course, were totally clueless.

"OK, so, bad guy, right?"

Everyone, even Qeelocke, ignored Grunge.

"He also was one of Felix Fausts' contacts and allies... who I sort of pissed off while making him believe I represented Faust, and resulted in him cutting all ties with Faust and tricked him into sealing off one of the minor Hellmouths leading directly to his dimension. Permanently." At the looks he received, especially from Caitlin and Lynch, he briefly squirmed, uncomfortable at the stares and diverted their attention by saying, "It's a long story, and not that relevant to the current situation. Qeelocke here, was apparently born in, or at least calls his home dimension the same as the demon realm we were just discussing. Sending him back into Damocles' grasp would be... well, I'm understating it just a bit, but it would be a _bad_ idea!"

"Yes, I was actually hoping to hide out here for a while, but given your own apparent dangers that you face, I find it hardly fair to bring my own troubles upon you," the small alien said. "Although, I must confess, I don't really have anywhere to go..."

"Well, about that," Harry turned the page of the book. "It wouldn't be your home, but there is a world where there _are_ plenty of your own kind. And we have the means of sending you there so it is untraceable by those hunting you."

"It... it sounds like paradise," Qeelocke gasped, looking over the information in the book. "Where... what _is_ this place?"

"It's called," Harry answered, " _Le Arcanes Magique Cr_ _é_ _ature Conservation Preserve_. But it is commonly referred to as the, uh, Veela Reservation. The one that has beach front property in Southern France."

They all just stared at him for a moment.

"Thanks for your hospitality, Roxy, everyone, and thank you for the tip, Mister Harry 'Thundercrack' Potter, sir! Oh, and thanks for the spell, Roxy. I'll never forget you! Even though I kinda just met you. I am _outta here_!" Qeelocke flashed all over briefly before a small portal opened directly overhead of the small creature and it was gone just like that.

"Oh poo," Roxy pouted.

"Ah, cheer up Roxy," Grunge tried to snuggle up to her. "If you'd like, I can get you a cat or something. Y'know, a black cat to go along with your awesome magical powers."

"Sarah's the witch," she continued to pout, but still allowed snuggling, apparently having completely forgotten the whole reason that set off the chain of events that introduced her to her never-actually-was pet. "I'm the info mage. Remember, Mr. Kekkaishi?"

"So does this mean you don't want a cat?"

The rest of the team sighed and rolled their eyes and immediately scattered. Harry collected his book and moved it back to its place on his shelf. It was a bit of a low note, but for their first mission as a team, where they were all together, everything had turned out all right.

Lynch went to his office and shut the door, turning on the news broadcasts and opening up his computer. Keeping an eye out for whatever was out there, preparing for the worst.

Caitlin got back on her computer and resumed her research and hoping that every mission turned out as well as this one had.

Harry looked down at the report he'd gotten via owl post while he'd been out with the team. Reading the summary, he _knew_ that not all missions would have a happy ending. And some missions, even after they were over, they could still come back to bite you in the arse.

He crumbled up the memo and threw it in the fire, turning to walk out onto his balcony. The parchment burned up quickly, but the words remained until the last; "TRAVELLER, AKA NADIA BRESLOV, ESCAPED! PRIORITY RETRIEVAL!"

 _End **Issue 01**_


	2. Beach Blanket Brawl

Issue 02: _Beach Blanket Brawl_

 _Summary:_ Two escaped super villains equals double the trouble for Gen13, especially when they come calling on the team's day off! How will they handle the dreaded Helmut, or deal with the deranged Traveller? But the real question that has to be asked, are they ready to join Thundercrack on his next Hit-Wizard Assignment?

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Sunnydale, CA_

 _June 1999_

Images displayed a scene of devastation straight out of a war zone. Too bad it was _not_ one.

" _Tonight, firefighters work desperately to control a raging fire that threatens to consume the munitions depot at_ Ellisberg Air Force Base," the voice from the TV reported, before panning out to show an attractive Asian news anchor in a bright green pencil-skirt suit. " _This was the latest in a series of attacks against US Military installations. Each time, the mysterious attacker has broken into a base undetected and made off with sophisticated military hardware._ "

The image switched to a still-frame-capture from degraded security footage, highlighting a humanoid figure amongst the smoke of the fires, only it was just as clear just by looking at it that the figure was _anything_ but human.

" _While local and Federal authorities decline to comment about this latest attack,_ " the news anchor continued while the security footage played, " _our sources have obtained video-footage from the surveillance cameras which may shed some light on the identity of the perpetrator._ " The screen went back to a close-up of her as she signed off, " _For the moment, however, the only thing certain is that the attacker is still at large and could very well strike again. This is Colleen Chen, ZNN News, White Sands, New Mexico._ "

Lynch turned off the news feed and leaned back in his chair, watching the bank of monitors as they continued to display the ongoing situation in New Mexico.

"So, Helmut is back in business," he said, steepling his fingers as he considered the issue. "And it looks like he's making up for lost time. I warned them twenty-five years ago that a maximum security prison wasn't going to be enough to hold him."

"You actually know this criminal, sir?" Anna asked from directly behind his chair.

" _I_ was the man who put him away after his first crime spree, Anna," he replied. "Before Team 7, I was just a young adventurer out to make a reputation. In the process, I nearly got myself _killed_ while bringing Helmut to justice. At his trial, Helmut swore he'd get even with me."

Showing concern, Anna then asked, "Will he still come after you, sir? Do you think the children are in any danger?"

Turning around, he regarded her with steely eyes. "If I've learned nothing else from all my years with I.O., it's to _always_ expect the _unexpected_."

While Lynch and Anna were watching the news, elsewhere in the beach-side multistory mansion another crisis was being monitored. On the top floor, the western bedroom specifically, the resident ICW Hit-Wizard, Harry Potter was in communication with his American counterparts, in regards to a memo that had gone out to all American-based Hit-Wizards as a matter of procedure.

"How did this happen?" Harry demanded of the face in the mirror.

While normally this might be a sign of delusion or confusion, in this case the face was not his own, and it was a magic communication mirror. It also happened to be 'disguised' as a standard laptop with video-conference capability, but in truth it was only a magic mirror with a fancy stand.

"Sir, I can assure you..." the American wizard placated him.

"Spare me your platitudes," he interrupted. "I mean, specifically, tell me step-by-step _how_ this happened? I don't care about fault or blame. I want to know what she did to get out so I can neutralize it when I capture her again."

"... Again, sir?" the wizard started looking down at his notes.

" _How_?" Harry stressed the word as much as he could.

"Well, as near as we have been able to determine, she either got her hands on one of the guards' emergency portkeys, or had some outside help that disrupted the wards enough for her to disapparate. All that can really be said, at this stage of the investigation, is that she was left in her cell, and an hour later when the standard roving patrol went by the same cell... she was gone."

Harry sat back and considered the facts. "Was she permitted, by anyone, access to any of her original possessions? The armor, or any piece of it?" he asked.

"No sir," the bureaucrat replied, checking his notes. "All of it was confiscated and sent to the Magical Intelligence Administration. As was she, for a month, before it was determined that they'd gotten everything they could out of her and put her into the Justice System for rehabilitation. According to her records, she was quite unstable. Kept insisting that she could not be held by, let me see here; 'a bunch of fossils'. Might I inquire, sir, what your interest is in this particular criminal?"

"I'll tell you about it after I find her and turn her back in," Harry said, "For right now, put it on the record that I'm taking this case. Send me as much intel as you can. I'll check back in once I have her in custody." He then cut the connection before anything more could be said.

"So," a feminine voice startled the wizard where he sat at his desk, "you're heading out again, huh?"

"Kat!" Harry exclaimed, getting his heart rate back under control. "You startled me!"

"Sorry," she apologized and walked into his room.

It wasn't until she did so that he took notice of her current attire. She must've just come from exercising, because she was wearing nothing but a green and purple sports bra (which on Fairchild was more akin to a push-up bra that was one size too small), and green spandex shorts with purple piping (which sat low on her hips and stopped with the bottom of her waist, even as it conformed to every curve of her body), showcasing a great deal of sweat-soaked, tanned, and well-toned skin. And yet again, Harry was reminded unabashedly that he was still a man and here was this divine epitome of femininity, and he was going to have to pretend everything was normal and they were just friends and... He hated his life so much.

"What is going on, Harry?" she asked, stopping next to his desk and looking down at him, and thereby forcing him to look 'up' at her. He quickly turned back to face the communication mirror, wishing that it was a real laptop for once.

"It's nothing to worry about," he said. "For right now at least. How go the studies? And by that I mean—"

"Our mystic skills and how well we're learning to use them," Caitlin interrupted him. "Fine, I guess. My time with that doctor friend of Mistress Harkness really helped me to understand my magic. I know probably as many spells as you do, but I can still only use Defensive Magic."

"But you _can_ use it?" he confirmed.

She nodded and sat on the edge of his desk, still trying to catch him so he'd look her way, but he kept finding legitimate excuses not to look anywhere in her general direction. Seeing that he didn't notice her silent acknowledgment of the question, she said aloud, "Yes. Well enough to defend myself and increase the effectiveness of what we mistakenly believed was my invulnerability. I can block or negate almost any offensive magic sent my way. More than that for anything of the natural world, and a lot of what our enemies are going to throw my way."

"What about the others?" Harry asked, getting up from his chair and moving about the room, straightening up things or otherwise just keeping himself occupied and avoid looking at her for too long.

"I can't get Roxy or Grunge to take _anything_ seriously, so I have no clue what they can or can't do with their magic," she freely admitted, also standing, but refusing to chase him down. "But we both saw them use their mystic talents recently and they seem to have good control over it. As for Bobby and Sarah," the buxom redhead shrugged, making Harry really regret how clean he kept his windows that he caught her reflection at that precise moment, "He's getting stronger, but his Gen-Factor is still much stronger. Still can't fly or melt bullets with his eyes, but he can start, stop, and control any fires in his vicinity, as well as create a number of different magic flames that have different effects beyond just burning everything they touch. Sarah is keeping her studies private, but she's practiced a few spells with me so I know she's powerful and is growing the same as the rest of us."

Harry suddenly stiffened and turned on the spot to stare at his teammate. She frowned when she noted that his eyes were laser-locked onto hers and his own expression spoke of fear and concern in abundance.

"What spells, specifically, did you try?" he demanded to know. "What classification? Name? Effect? Purpose? Kat, you cannot just mess around with—!"

"We know, Harry," she interrupted him once more. "Sarah wanted to try out her elemental spells, maybe try and combine them with her own Gen-Factor. She summoned wind, rain, and called a storm. She could call forth a lightning strike, but couldn't dictate where it would strike, hence my participation so we didn't destroy the neighborhood. We also tried putting a protection spell on the household. And... given my own talents, I asked her if I could help out, at the very least to learn the spell."

The wizard frowned and furrowed his brow in concentration.

"Protection spell?" he said. "I already have every ward in the book, and quite a few that aren't, on this place. What kind of protection spell?"

The green-eyed redhead smirked and turned to leave his room, saying over her shoulder something that had him racing for yet another cold shower. "The kind that require the participants be sky-clad."

"..." Harry's mouth hung open as the door to his room swung closed, leaving him standing there, agape.

 _Beach Skate Park_

 _Laguna Beach, CA_

 _Next Day_

It was a hot, bight, sunny day. Barely a cloud in the sky, and the temperature in the mid-eighties with low humidity. In other words, it was a typical Southern Californian afternoon, one that had all the teens and those not having to work spend all their time doing everything outdoors.

It also happened to be a Tuesday. (For the record)

His name is Percival Edmund Chang, but nobody calls him that. In grade school everyone just called him _Eddy_. He now prefers the name _Grunge_ , symbolic of his lifestyle. In so many _more_ ways than one.

A life that has—relatively—recently gone through some major changes. More than just his involvement with a bunch of other kids in the government experiment called _Project Genesis_ , he was also discovered to have innate mystical talents, singling him out as a _Kekkaishi_ , a magic user that specializes in creating and controlling magic barriers. Thanks to John Lynch, Grunge, Freefall, Fairchild, Rainmaker, Burnout and Thundercrack were spared the fate of being mindless cogs in I.O.'s war machine. Thanks to Harry Potter, they all were now aware of and were growing in the use of their mystic talents.

On a beautiful summer morning, however, the only thing on Grunge's mind is hanging out with his pal at a local mini-ramp in Laguna Beach.

"Hey, Bobby!" Grunge called out as he set up for and pulled off his trick, "How rad is this invert? It just doesn't _get_ any smoother."

Coming up the ramp and gearing up for his own trick, Robert Lane, better known as _Burnout_ , replied with a bit of trash talk. "Ooooh, an _invert_. You can do those, too? You better start _rollerblading_." he mocked.

"Oho!" Grunge called back with a hard laugh. "Sarcastic words from the quiet man, eh? There's nothing wrong with 'old school' moves."

Driving up to the top, Bobby took to the air and replied with both words and action. "Check me out—" he executed a near-flawless skateboard trick, "—kick-flip to fakie, _chump_!"

More quietly, the blond added as an aside, "And I didn't have to use my Gen-Factor to catch it clean!"

"Hey! I—I was legit!" Grunge protested.

"Whatever you say, bro!" Bobby laughed.

They continued showing off and trying to one-up and trash talk each other while a group of other skaters and onlookers observed and provided live commentary. After a while though, the sun started to set and most everybody had things to do, like eat dinner, and most of the commentary wandered off. The last of them waved goodbye to the two GenActives with a hearty, "Great session, guys!"

"Our pleasure!" Grunge called back, holding out his hand in salute as he kicked up his board and caught it. "Looks like we got our own _groupies_ ," he said in an aside to Bobby.

"Think so?" the blond shrugged. "I wish it was this easy getting _Sarah's_ attention."

"Still no luck, huh?"

They both turned and started walking back towards home. Or rather, towards the van so they could drive back to Sunnydale.

"Every time I try to get close, she shuts me down." Bobby said.

"I get the same vibes from Kat," Grunge agreed, drawing an incredulous look from his friend.

"I don't think _melding_ yourself into her bed exactly helped the situation, Grunge," he shared.

"It would've worked, man!" the shorter man defended himself. "But I still can't figure out how Anna knew it was me when she was changing the sheets!"

Shaking his head, and determining that a change in conversation was necessary, Bobby said, "I just wish she and Mr. Lynch would both get off my crank. They're always complaining about my jamming, but if I didn't have my guitar, I'd go _nuts_ living in that house!"

"You gots to _chill_ , Bobby!" Grunge grinned. "I mean, we're _all_ still getting used to each other. But, hey, we've got the sun, the waves, our boards, and some Skate Bettys. Just don't rock the boat and we're in for some _smooth sailing_. Know what I mean?"

 _Lynch Villa_

It was the team's "day off", something that Lynch had promised them, and which they'd all insisted upon for every week since taking him up on his offer of hiding out with his protection and training.

The girls were out by the pool, while the boys were off skating. It had been just Caitlin and Sarah, both having a quiet competition to see who could do the most laps, so when the Native American noticed Roxy walking out in a flower print bikini with a towel casually draped around her neck, she asked, "Joining us for some laps, Roxy?"

"Actually, I'm looking for Grunge," she replied, cocking her hips as she looked about frustrated. "If this suit doesn't get his attention, _nothing_ will."

"Hate to break the news, but he and Bobby went skateboarding down in Laguna," the brown-skinned beauty said as she pulled herself out of the water, stretching out her dark red one-piece suit back into place as she got to her feet.

She padded over and grabbed her own towel before patting herself dry and giving her long raven black hair a quick squeeze. Leaving the rest to air dry, she joined Roxy by the lounge chairs and laid herself back to enjoy the warm sun and the cool breeze. Opening her eyes, she noticed the scantily-clad teen next to her having some difficulty with putting suntan lotion on her back.

"You want some help with that?" she offered.

"If you could just do my back, that'd be great," Roxy said, already moving into position so she was laying down for maximum exposure.

"Still no luck with Grunge, huh?" asked Sarah as she moved over and took the lotion bottle.

"Damn straight," Roxy scowled, kicking her legs up behind her as she rested her chin on crossed arms. "And you know why, don'tcha?"

Dripping the suntan lotion into her hands and holding it for a bit before laying her hands on the white girl's bare back, just to warm it up some, Sarah shrugged and answered, "Well, it seems—"

Only for Roxy to interrupt with a whining grumble. "It's all _Kat's_ fault!"

"Caitlin?" Sarah startled slightly. "How's that?"

"Just _look_ at her, Sarah," the younger woman pouted. "How am I supposed to compete against _that_?"

As they were speaking, fortunately just outside of hearing range, the flawless redhead climbed out of the pool up via the deep-end ladder, allowing the water to flow and trickle down off of her at each step so that there wouldn't be that much of a puddle when she stepped fully onto the deck. It had the _purely unintentional_ effect of displaying every single one of the perfect woman's lethal curves and sculpted muscles.

"I mean, we all received super powers from the Gen-Factor," Roxy said. "But Kat got some kind of bonus and ended up this _Ultra-Babe_! It just sucks! And what makes it even worse is the fact that she doesn't seem to realize it. If she copped an attitude, at least I'd have a reason to hate her guts. But Kat's always been like a sister to me."

"Appearances aren't everything, Roxy," Sarah admonished her younger teammate as she continued applying the lotion to her upper back.

"Shyeah, right," Roxy scoffed. "Been hitting that Peace Pipe pretty hard lately, huh?"

Rolling her eyes, and only refusing to rise to the bait because she knew that her friend didn't really mean anything by it, she just sighed and refilled her hands with a fresh supply of lotion as she moved onto her lower back. "OK, OK, end of lecture," she said. "But just between you and me, I can actually understand Grunge's... 'desires', primitive as they may be. But it's an altogether different matter whether Grunge can satisfy Caitlin's needs," her own hands happened to roam a bit further south during her musing, cupping the young woman's tight ass as she rubbed in the lotion, "in a way only another woman truly can," then she leaned over and whispered right into the bi-color-haired girl's ear, intentionally brushing her nylon-clad breasts against her bare back, "if you know what I mean."

Roxy's eyes widened and her whole body suddenly tensed with a fight-or-flight reaction, which almost instantly stalled as a certain... encounter that she'd had during her time at a certain cottage in Canada rang _very loudly_ through her mind.

"Uh... oh." Roxy gulped and was suddenly hyper-aware of Sarah's hands on her body, and was surprised at her own reaction to that awareness, as the tingling of every hair on her body going rigid coupled with the pooling heat of a full-body blush flooded throughout her limbs, and especially her buttocks, where the Native American lesbian's hands still rested, teasingly squeezing and rubbing in the tanning lotion. "I... I never would've, um, guessed... I guess."

Struggling to hid her blush, she hunkered down into her arms, suddenly wishing that she and that Jennifer character had never gotten into that fight. If she hadn't, then maybe Tris wouldn't have... The whole thing was just _such_ a mess that she felt it had scarred her for life. At the very least, it kept her from snapping out like a typical homophobe. Unfortunately, it also left her at a complete loss and questioning her own... reactions when caught in a situation like, well, like _this_!

Sarah moved on and finished up her friend's legs, completely unaware of the confusing reactions she was dealing with. Besides, Roxy wasn't exactly her type and she'd caught no sense that the bi-hair-colored girl was even _bi-curious_ , let alone even casually interested in the same sex.

Roxy blamed Tris and her weird 'family' for her current situation. Here she was, a completely straight—if not entirely normal—girl trying to impress the boy she liked so he'd like her more and actually pay attention to her... and she was letting herself get felt up by the only lesbian in residence and... she wasn't hating it. She groaned, willfully believing it was in frustration over her feelings rather than what Sarah's hands were doing to her legs and feet. Magic had ruined her life!

Finished, the Native American beauty stood up and stepped back over to her own lounge chair and sought to relax once more. Only to be brought out of her reverie by a quiet and soft, "Thanks Sarah."

Smiling, she replied easily, "No problem Roxy."

Suddenly the younger GenActive sat up, glaring at her teammate. "Hold the phone," she said, keeping her voice quiet enough they wouldn't immediately be overheard. "Are you saying that you think _you_ could give it to Kat better than Grunge could? Hot as Kat is, enough for even _me_ to admit that, she doesn't strike me as the kind that would swing both ways, if _you_ know what I mean. Sides, it is kind of _obvious_ that she's got a bit of a crush on You-Know-Who, right?"

Sarah just shrugged and gave a small smile. "I never said that I was planning on doing anything. I merely suggested that another _woman_ would be able to satisfy her more than Grunge could. I know you like him and everything, Roxy, but he is rather disgusting."

Feeling the sudden need to defend her man, Roxy couldn't stop herself from shouting out loud, "He is not _DISGUSTING_!"

Appearing as though waiting for just that moment, although really he'd been on the patio trying not to get caught staring at his bikini-clad housemates, Grunge pulled out the piece that had been bothering him for the past few minutes before holding it up in front of Roxy's face while saying, "Hey, Rox, you want disgusting? Check out this whoppin' booger!"

"Eeep!"

The gravity-control diviner squeaked in surprise before reacting with a completely reasonable response. She used her powers to throw her disgusting perverted boyfriend into the pool.

" _WHOAAA_!" Grunge cried out as he floated/flew into the air and then paused right over the deep end of the pool. "Watcha doin' Rox?!"

 _ ***KERPLASH***_

"Don't _ever_ sneak up on me like that again, Grunge!" Roxy screamed down at him as his head resurfaced, clutching her towel to her chest. "Or the next time I swear I'll dump you in the middle of the ocean!"

"Glub-glub-glub!" Grunge tried to protest, but his mouth hadn't quite breached the surface yet. "Geez! What's gotten into _her_?!" he asked, but everyone had already walked away.

 _Sunnydale Beach_

Harry was running.

Not all out, which would defeat the purpose of running along the beach anyway. No, he was just running the same as every one else that goes jogging along the edge of the ocean. To keep fit and to think.

Sure, his Gen-Factor powers enabled him to control how time passed around him, as well as to affect the passage of time for those he was in physical contact with. Just because he could be faster than everyone around him did not mean that he was ' _fast_ '. Not to mention that when his powers had first manifested, he'd had to take regular breaks and he'd eaten practically a ton of food. Like, literally, nearly one thousand kilograms of food!

Since then, he'd made sure that he could run a minimum of a full kilometer without rest or breaks. Unenhanced of course. Of course, since starting his regimen, he'd been steadily increasing the distance and now averaged five to ten kilometers a day. The important part was that he _could_ run the distance uninterrupted, not how fast it took him to cover it.

Besides, now that he lived in a beach side villa in Southern California, rather than a suburban model home, with relatives that hated him, in Southern England, or a thousand-year-old castle in Northern Scotland, he found that he actually _enjoyed_ keeping fit and going for long runs. Especially in weather like today; not a cloud in the sky, pleasantly warm without being humid, and friendly neighbors that also liked to jog.

Now if only he was in the mood to actually appreciate the atmosphere.

The Traveller, as she'd been dubbed, had escaped. If she'd been in county lock-up, or even a high-security prison, he'd believed that she'd just managed to repair her damaged suit and time-traveled her way out of there. But she'd been put into a _magic_ prison. Not the Super-Max Prisons of Sub-Alcatraz or Azkaban, but one secure enough that Harry doubted even he could get out of it, not without some inside _and_ outside help that is. Which naturally begged the question, did Nadia have some help of her own? And if so, who?

He'd gotten the file with all the details that the Department of Magic had on one Nadia Breslov, the name they'd had to pry out of her with a combination of spellwork and Veritaserum, as she'd refused to identify herself to any of her 'fossil' captors. At first she'd been labeled crazed or insane or just plain delusional, until the MIA, Magical Intelligence Administration, (the American version of the Department of Mysteries), discovered a few pointed facts about the woman's own biology coupled with the results of tests done on her armor and weapons.

She _was_ from the future. Roughly five to seven hundred years, give or take a few decades here and there, by their calculations. Rather daunting, Harry mused, to think that all magic-users would be extinct within the next half-millennium.

The real problem was that her method of time travel separated her from the time stream, so any changes done to the past or to affect her own future would have no effect on her in the 'present', even if she killed her own ancestor, _she_ would still be here and nothing about her could be changed. Which wouldn't have meant much, if she wasn't a raging psychopath. They did the psychological evaluations and testing. She's a psychopath. Though, admittedly, there were _some_ indications that she'd actually been _engineered_ to be that way, perhaps as some kind of soldier, or evolutionary upbringing. Whatever it was, it was dangerous just to let her 'go back to the future', even if that future no longer existed as such.

So, somebody in the Department of Magic had gotten it in their heads to try and rehabilitate the woman. At the very least subdue her psychopathic tendencies. The MIA had managed to uncover exactly which sub-cranial implant had been pushing those psychopath-signals throughout her brain and reversed it, along with a handful of other trinkets and doodads they'd disabled or altered. Then they'd wrapped things up with a geas to keep her from intentionally killing anybody or anything ever again, before locking her up in a secure facility and letting the system do its work.

Then she escaped. Somehow.

Wizards, Magicians, Mystics, even a Sorcerer or two, all of them a _lot_ smarter and wiser than he was were baffled by the future-woman's escape. Quite a few were as perturbed as he was, and were researching ways to prevent future escape attempts. Harry's job, thankfully, wasn't to keep her _in_ prison, just to catch her and put her back there. Fortunately, he had a plan or two percolating in the back of his mind on how to accomplish just that.

One involved finding out exactly who this _'Langston'_ character was she'd been going on about when they'd first encountered her. Unfortunately, all evidence pointed to him being a time traveler, same as her, which made 'asking around' more than a bit difficult. And he wasn't exactly keen on causing some kind of historical event, destructive or otherwise, that might get such a time traveler's attention in the first place.

So, until he had more on this Langston, he'd go with one of his alternative plans. Which meant figuring out at least three key pieces of information; _how_ she escaped, _where_ she's been, and _what_ she's truly after. Anything else could be deduced just from answers to _one_ of those questions. Problem was, as a wizard he had no means of getting those answers. The real problem, however, and the reason for him running to 'clear his head' as so many others do, was that he actually had the means of getting those answers... by asking his Team to help him out. He just had no clue as to whether or not they were ready to deal with mystical threats on this level or not. _That_ was the real problem.

Reaching the end of the beach, where the cliffs and mountains took up more space than the flat areas, meaning he was only a mile or two from the city limits, Harry sighed, shook his head as he rested for a beat, before turning and running back to the villa at the same steady pace he'd maintained for the past—glancing at his watch, he was momentarily stunned—two hours!

Huh. Apparently he'd had more on his mind than he'd thought, as his runs usually didn't last more than three-quarters of an hour these days. Double checking his watch, but for the pedometer setting, he was intrigued to note that he'd actually covered... _twenty-seven and a half kilometers_!? Nearly to twenty-eight kilometers judging from the decimal points... That was fourteen kilometers per hour, or four meters per second... _without_ his Gen-Factor boosting his speed.

He doubted that he'd be winning any races from this alone, but it still kind of surprised him that he could maintain that kind of pace for any length of time without cheating. Maybe he should take Lynch up on his offer to properly gauge his speed and compare it with other speedsters. See how he ranked.

Putting that out of his mind for the time being, Harry started running for real, pushing himself (without tapping into his powers) to his top land speed and making for his home as fast as he could. It was time to have a serious chat with the rest of the Team.

 _Lynch Villa_

"Caitlin?" Lynch said as he walked up to the sunbathing redhead. "May I have a word with you?"

"Huh?" Caitlin pushed her sunglasses up her head as she looked up at the older man, completely unconcerned about him observing her as she lay there in a simple white bikini.

"Sure, Mr. Lynch. What's up?" she asked, raising her head.

"I don't want to alarm you, but I thought you and the others should know—" he started to explain, but she cut him off rather abruptly.

"About Helmut?" she interrupted. "The guy who broke out of prison and has been robbing all those munitions depots. You're worried that he may come after you."

His face a rictus of unpleasant surprise, he blurted out, "How did you _know_?"

Shrugging, she shifted her green eyes toward the side as she answered, "I saw the news reports about him last night," she reached out for the iced tea on the table beside her, "and then I remembered the photograph of him in your office. Do you think he'll be able to find—huh?" She stopped and looked closer at her glass, which was shaking a lot more than if she'd just bumped the table or anything. "My glass! It's _shaking_!"

Suddenly, the vibrations only detectable by the iced tea became more pronounced and noticeable enough that the whole household was feeling it now. Those standing almost lost their footing and they could all hear the sound of groaning and moving earth.

"Is it an earthquake?" Sarah shouted. Not being from an area that frequented many tremors, she had no basis to compare it to.

Lynch, on the other hand, had been in his fair share. " _No_! It must be—!"

"Look!" Caitlin interrupted him again. "Down on the beach! There's something moving under the—!"

Her observation became moot as the object creating a noticeable bulge and trail beneath the granular soil decided to stop hiding and shot out of the ground like a bullet from a cannon.

" _HOLEE—!_ " Grunge screamed out.

" _SHITTAH!(*)_ " Roxy finished for him at the same volume.

(*AN: Definistion of "shittah" - Source of a wood mentioned frequently in the Bible; probably a species of genus Acacia. Source ref: Word Find dot Com ( word/shittah/) )

Helmut was an eight-foot plus armored behemoth that had more in common with an armadillo or mole than a man. Other than the silver metallic armor elements, his uniform was mostly green with rather significant red spots here and there. He also had a tail.

"Come out and face me, _Lynch_!" the armored mercenary growled in a voice as gravelly as the ground he dug through. "It's _payback_ time for all those miserable years I spent in prison! All because of _you_! And since you don't have your friend _Parvarotti_ to save you this time, my victory is assured!"

The moment Helmut had revealed himself, Gen13 had instantly sprung into action, so the green-clad villain hadn't even stepped off the beach by the time they stepped forth to challenge him. Fortunately, by staying up on the retaining wall between their backyard and the actual beach, they maintained the high ground, which the ranged members of the team took full advantage of.

"You'll still have to get past us, monster!" Rainmaker yelled as she charged up a bolt of lightning with her Gen-Factor powers.

"Uh... so... what're we supposed to do now?" Bobby whispered as he came up beside the red-swimsuit-clad Native American.

"We take the fight to him, Bobby!" she growled at him as she unleashed the charged up energy with an air-crackling _zap_.

Rolling his eyes, Bobby groaned, "How'd I know you were going to say that?"

The bolt of Gen-Factor-made lightning struck the armored villain, who started laughing to the team's mounting dismay. "Hehehe! That tickles, baby! I've had worse from _static cling._ "

"I—I just don't have enough _power_ without my power bands..." she cried.

"No sweat, Sarah!" the blond pyromancer next to her said, igniting his own Gen-Factor powers. "I've got the situation under control! Let's see him laugh off one of my _plasma blasts_!" The stream of open flame shot across the distance with a fiery _whroosh_ , hitting the target right in his face.

" _RRAARR_!" the monstrous villain cried out in pain. "Now you're making me angry, kid!"

Roxy took one look at the situation and summed it up, "Burnout's blast can't penetrate the armor! But I know _just_ the way to stop him!" She stepped up to the edge of the retaining wall.

"Uh, Rox? Come back here!" Grunge called out to his girlfriend. As much as he wanted to play the field, he still cared about the younger babe. "What the _hell_ do you think you're _doing_?!" He called out when she jumped down to the beach and practically ran right up to the flame and lightning proof villain.

"Let's see what happens when I use some _heavy gravity_ on Mr. Roly-Poly here!" the bikini-clad Freefall smirked as her hands lit up with sky-blue energy.

"Unnh?!" Helmut suddenly grunted as he felt the effects of the girl's powers. "What's... going on? Can't... Stand... UP!" He crashed back into the sand with a giant _whoomph_!

"Look Grunge!" she called out with a wide smile. "It worked!"

The others joined her down on the beach as it was clear that Helmut was clearly struggling and couldn't get any purchase to even begin to fight Roxy's gravity powers. Turning as much of his gaze as he could to glare at the one holding him down, he growled in as threatening a tone as he could, "But for how long, _little girl_? You can't keep me down _forever_!"

Sarah reached out to encourage her teammate, at least that was her intention when she touched Roxy's arms in a sort of sideways hug. "Don't listen to him, Roxy! Just believe in your—"

"Yeep!" the bi-color-haired girl squeaked as her magic suddenly flared and she lost concentration on what was happening around her. Being a _Diviner_ didn't make one a _Seer_ or vice versa, but a consequence of being able to magically convey information sometimes meant that Roxy could just _know_ things at a glance... or a touch. Things like Sarah's own process of self-discovery and... _coming out_. Her mind couldn't help but notice a number of similarities between herself and what she'd just divined about her 'lesbian' teammate.

Helmut took full advantage of the Gen Active's lapse and surged to his feet, the movement knocking the two young women nearest him to the sand as he loomed over them.

"You made me lose my concentration!" Roxy accused Sarah beside her.

"C'mon!" Rainmaker tried pulling her teammate to her feet. "We've got to get out of here!"

"Too late, girlie," Helmut growled, "I'm _up_ and the two of you are dead!"

"If they die, it'll be from laughing at that costume of yours, Helmut!" a new voice called for his attention.

" _Who_?!" he spun on the spot and stopped for a second at the sheer audacity of the speaker. "What is this? A Sports Illustrated Swimsuit photo shoot? I have to admit I'm impressed with what I see," he leered at the gorgeous white-bikini-clad redhead standing before him. "But you're a fool if you think a hot bod's gonna keep me from tearing you apart."

"Let's go, Roxanne!" Sarah hissed as she finally managed to put Roxy to her feet, utilizing Caitlin's distraction while they could.

"The only fool I see around here is _you_ , Helmut," Caitlin mocked as she approached. "It's hard to believe you'd be _stupid enough_ to go after the _one man_ who locked you up in the first place. But then again, I don't suppose someone who runs around dressed like an _over-grown armadillo_ is going to be mistaken for a rocket scientist."

As his anger grew, the observers couldn't help but notice the same vibration that had first heralded Helmut's arrival was even now emitting from his same position.

" _YOU!_ " He was so angry that he could barely speak in complete sentences. As he lost the last of his cool, he charged straight for the supernaturally-endowed superheroine. "You dare to mock me?! I'm going to _relish_ watching Lynch weep over your lifeless _corpse_!"

It was upon this scene that Harry "Thundercrack" Potter arrived, just in the nick of time. As always.

He grabbed Caitlin by the shoulder and accelerated her into his time stream, and immediately started to berate her. "Please tell me that you all aren't this _bloody stupid_!" he yelled, his British accent on full, telling her just how pissed he was.

The scantily-clad redhead blinked and reared back upon seeing Helmut 'frozen' right in front of her, his claws in the process of ripping through the palm tree beside her. Fortunately Harry kept his grip on her and they both backed away from the charging monster.

"Harry!" Caitlin hugged her teammate and leader. "When did you get here? And... what do you mean?"

Harry sighed and shook his head as he transferred his hand from her shoulder to her forearm and 'dragged' her around to the other side of the monster's mad rush. He didn't bother noticing the blush shining through the girl's tan as he hadn't let go of her while moving his hand. His next words to her, though, thoroughly extinguished any remaining blush.

"I didn't need to be here from the start to recognize who that is Kat!" Harry snapped at her. "My question is just how _thick_ you all are, because from what little of it I _did see_ , it's pretty damn bloody thick!"

His grip was by no means enough to hurt her, but she could tell, nevertheless, that he was gripping her arm extremely tight. Coupled with his tone and the burning anger she saw in his green eyes made her want to cover up and hide in a corner with her blanket wrapped tight around her, using up an entire box of tissues from sniffling and crying. It wasn't that he was angry with her, it was his disappointment that hurt the most.

"You lot have _magic_ , Caitlin!" Harry screamed at her suddenly cringing form. "Helmut's armor is enough to let him dig through the Earth's crust like a normal person swims through water! Which means that it can withstand extreme pressure, extreme heat, static discharge, and rapidly changing conditions. That is quite literally, every single one of our Gen-Factor abilities and _then some_! You told me you and Sarah had worked on combining her Gen-Factor with her elemental spells. Bobby could ignite a fire _inside_ the bleedin' armor! And while Roxy had him on the ground earlier, Grunge could have put him in a _KEKKAI_! Which you then could have reinforced and made strong enough to actually hold him! And do not even get me started about how you basically just _walked right up_ to the super-strong monster with lethal claws and _taunted him_ to his face! And then _just STOOD THERE_!"

Harry took a deep breath and struggled to get his temper back under control.

"I'm tempted to just put you back in the path of his claws just to teach you, but it wouldn't hurt long enough to stick, I'm afraid," he grumbled, running his other hand through his hair. "I'm going to stay out of this. Unless you lot screw it up all over again. Try and do better, yeah?" Then he let go of her arm and the world started moving again, while Harry disappeared.

Meanwhile, Helmut finished what he'd been in the middle of saying as though no time had passed. Oh wait, it hadn't. Seeing the devastation he wrought to the spot she'd been standing in, she recognized how lucky she'd been that Harry had come along when he did.

"Assuming he can find _enough_ of the pieces after... after... huh?" It had taken a second, but the armored villain finally recognized that his target had _not_ been hit, and was in fact standing behind him. The tree he'd slashed, though, that was still falling.

" _ **TIMBERRR!**_ " Grunge called out as he dove away from the falling tree. Or at least, he tried to. "Uhm... ow," he groaned as the not-as-heavy-as-you'd-think tree landed squarely on his back, driving him into the sand, and driving something else out of him.

Rainmaker and Freefall raced over to help out their teammate while Fairchild positioned herself between the threat and her friends.

"Next time, Mr. Lumberjack," Rainmaker said to Grunge as the girls helped lift while the groaning Gen Active struggled, "try jumping _out_ of the way!" Her face scrunched up and she asked, "Pheeuw! What's that _smell_?!"

"Grunge," Freefall answered, recognizing the stench all too well.

"Hey," the pinned-kekkaishi protested, "it knocked the wind out of me!"

" _Literally_!" the Diviner snapped at her boyfriend. "Ate the leftover chili for breakfast, _didn't you_?!"

"Just keep Burnout away or we could have a real disaster," he joked.

"Hey guys," Fairchild interrupted. "I'm going to borrow this for a second." She then casually and easily picked up the broken tree they'd been struggling with in one hand and swung it about like a baton.

"You've taken your best shot, Helmut," she smirked, hefting the large 'club' in her hands. "Now it is my turn! [HARDEN]" The word she'd spoken wasn't English, or any recognizable language as a matter of fact, but the _meaning_ of the word came through loud and clear. Especially when the wood in her hands seemed to petrify and strengthen before their very eyes.

Fairchild had been studying after all.

"What's that gonna do?" Helmut laughed. "In case you didn't just see, I just tore through that thing like tissue paper, and no matter how hard you can swing it, I'll just do the same thing all over again! Hah!"

"Let's test that theory," Fairchild grinned, pulling back to strike the charging villain as hard as she could, "shall we?" The magically-hardened palm tree hit the armored monster broadside, though he did catch it with his claws.

Claws which then chipped and slipped.

Helmut went skipping and hurtling down the beach toward the ocean.

"Grunge," Fairchild ordered, dropping the broken tree, "Put a barrier around us! Don't let Helmut escape, not even through the ground!"

"On it!" the kekkaishi snapped to attention and then assumed his stance, quickly establishing a nigh-invisible red energy cube around them, which went underground as well as out into the water, keeping Helmut inside. What was more impressive was that it was clear air, the water, and pretty much everything that wasn't Helmut specifically, _could_ pass through the barrier. Yet, when Helmut tried to get past it, he was shocked and sent shooting back to where he'd started from.

"Ooooh," the monster growled at the approaching redhead. "Think you've got me cornered? You've got me shaking in my boots, baby! So I guess I'd better hurry up and kill you while I've still got the chan—hunh?!"

"Been there and done that, _Jerky_!" He'd taken another swipe at her, but rather than rely on Harry's speed, Fairchild relied upon her own reflexes and strengths, jumping over the whooshing swipe, and then turning it into a sweeping flip that put her into Helmut's blind spot, effectively disappearing to his eyes.

"You're looking a little tense there, Helmut! Take a load off your feet..." Sliding beneath him, Fairchild positioned and braced herself to knock the behemoth off his feet one last time.

"Son of a— _HMMPH_!"

"...and get some sun!" Fairchild swung her legs up perpendicular to the rest of her body at high speed, quite effectively flipping the armored villain end over end. "Listen up, Team! We've got to _keep_ him _down_!" she ordered as she kipped back up on her feet.

"Damn you! I'll—!" he cursed, struggling much like a turtle on its back.

"A little hot under the collar, Helmut?" Rainmaker commented as she called forth a huge wave down upon the prone figure. "Let's see if I can cool you off a bit. _Surf's up_!"

" _ **D'OH**_ **!** "

"Wipeout!" Fairchild grinned as she high-fived Rainmaker. "Nice work, Sarah. All that sea water's created a pool of quicksand around him! Now... how about we _mix things up_ a bit? Remember that whirlpool spell you tried on the hot tub the other day?"

Rainmaker matched her teammate's grin and then knelt just outside of the churning earth and the struggling beast within. A handful of whispered incantations later, she drew a sigil into the sand and after the spell was complete, clapped her hands three times. In response to the final clap, the sigil glowed briefly before vanishing from the sand, and the quicksand holding Helmut was suddenly a lot more active, looking more like the ocean in a hurricane than your typical pool of quicksand.

"Whugh _-da...*glub*_?" he gargled, unable to get any purchase and barely able to stay above the surface.

"Spell won't last long," Rainmaker warned, still kneeling at the edge of the quicksand area. "Looks as though we've got him trapped for now."

Up on the wall, Lynch came up behind Burnout with an urgent task. "Bobby, I need you to set up your electric guitar," he said, taking the blond by the shoulder.

"Huh?" he replied, perplexed. "Set up my rig? Here? _Now_?"

"We don't have much time," Lynch ordered.

"Fortunately," Harry said from right in front of them, Bobby's guitar in hand, "time is something of my specialty. Let me guess, sensitive to certain vibrations on a specific frequency?"

Lynch just smiled at the team leader and nodded.

"Right, while I set that up, see what you can do with your own magic to help out, Burnout," he ordered and then vanished, while near-simultaneously numerous amps and other equipment began to appear on the beach.

"My magic?" the blond repeated, and them slapped himself upside the head. "D'oh!"

Meanwhile, at the same moment the gentlemen on the wall were planning their endgame, down on the beach, things had taken a sharp and unpleasant turn.

In a bid for freedom, drawing upon all his instincts for survival, Helmut used all of his strength to get one hand free and reached for the nearest source of purchase, while screaming at the girl that had trapped him, " _Not just yet_!"

"Oh shit!" was all Rainmaker had time to say before her leg was caught in Helmut's mad grab and began to pull with a strength that she could not match. "I—I can't get away! He's using me to climb out of the quicksand! Ulp—!"

"If I'm going down in this quicksand, then you're coming with me!" he threatened the brown-skinned beauty.

Unfortunately, Helmut was more right than Rainmaker was, since she had barely a fraction of the strength and durability that Fairchild could call upon, she couldn't maintain her position on the grainy soil, so he was dragging her down into the mire more than using her to escape. Fairchild watched it all happen and was briefly paralyzed with indecision. She wanted to jump in and rescue her friend, but even if she could get Sarah free there wouldn't be anything that she could do to actually get them _out_.

"Sarah!" she cried out, helpless as the Apache's head went under the swirling sand.

"Outta the way, Kat!" Freefall shouted, already floating above the spot where their teammate had disappeared, her hands filled with sky-blue energy.

"But... how will you know where she is in that? And how can you get _her_ instead of _him_?" she asked.

Roxy's eyes clouded over with magical energy as she focused her Gen-Factor on the quicksand below, and answered, "I _know_."

Seconds later, Sarah Rainmaker's body came flying out of the mire, sand plastered practically all over her body and in her hair, but judging by that first coughing gasp as she cleared the soil it was clear she was breathing just fine and still alive. The girls quickly retreated back towards where Harry had just finished setting up their teammate's rig.

Right as they joined them, Burnout smiled brightly as he finished flipping through the book of notes that he always kept with him. "Right," he told everybody, "Got it! Let's heat things up for ol' Helmut! [ _Fervefacio_!]" he screamed/intoned while pointing at the quicksand with a particular handsign. If the sand had been roiling before, now it was _boiling_!

Demonstrating just what one is capable of when faced with imminent demise, Helmut surged out of the boiling quicksand like a trout jumping up stream. Only, they all quickly realized as the armored monster continued to dance and scream, it wasn't the _water_ that Burnout had cast the spell on, but rather the man's _armor_!

"I think we're ready, Bobby," Harry called out, handing over the young man's guitar.

"Do your stuff, kid!" Lynch ordered, a grim grin on his scarred face.

"Check out this new riff I've been working on Grunge-man!" Bobby said as he started to play.

"Aaagh!" Anna cried out in pain, holding her ears and backing away from the speakers. "Is... is this supposed to be _music_?!"

"American music, apparently," Harry commented as he pulled out his wand.

"Wicked, my man! It _kicks_!" Grunge complimented his friend, already 'rocking out' like a stereotypical 'grunge' rocker.

" _ **YEEAAGH!**_ " Helmut screamed in pain, as much from the noise assaulting him as the lingering heat in his suit. "That noise! That horrible noise! _STOOOP IIIT_!"

"Nah, I think we need more volume," Harry grinned and cast the " _Sonorus_!" spell on each of the speakers, modifying it so that the enhanced sound would only be directed at Helmut, while it remained the same for everyone else.

" _AAAIIYEEAAARGH_!" Helmut's cries actually went up in pitch as he was assaulted with a whole new level of sonic attack. " _ **NYEAGH**_ _! My—my head! Pain! Unbearable pain!_ "  
"It may be the only chord he knows, but right now it's music to my ears!" Fairchild said as she helped Freefall with clearing the sand off of Rainmaker. "Keep playing, Bobby!"

"The speakers are going to blow any second now!" Harry warned everybody, readying himself to get into the fight. Fortunately, Lynch had a plan.

"Which means we've got to finish Helmut while he's still vulnerable!" said Lynch. "Grunge!"

"What's the plan, Boss?" the suddenly-all-business surfer leapt into action.

"The locking mechanism for Helmut's armor is in his belt! You're going to have to get in close, Grunge, and knock it out of commission!" he ordered.

Almost as he spoke, Grunge was already moving. Helmut was in so much pain from Bobby's 'playing', that he didn't even react when the young Asian surfer got in close and even took time to line up his shot and destroyed the armor's locking mechanism with an over-the-top " _KII-YAH_!" karate punch. Practically simultaneously with the speakers finally blowing out and the ceasing of the noise of an electric guitar riff, was the klanging noise of Helmut's armor falling right off of his body and into pieces along the beach. Everybody just stood and stared for a moment in full appreciation of what had just happened. Even if that 'appreciation' was mostly disgust at what they were seeing.

"Eeewww!" Roxy pretty much summed up the sight of Helmut in nothing but his undies. "Somebody get the _body-wax_!"

"And a _lot_ of it," Caitlin agreed.

"What're you all lookin' at?" the nearly-naked green-skinned primate (he had enough hair to count as one anyway) growled at them.

"A giant step backwards in human evolution?" Sarah replied to the 'unmasked' supervillain's question.

"Look, the dude's wearing _CK Briefs_!" Grunge commented. "And the same color as mine."

"Now that's _really_ gross," Caitlin said, as everyone's faces scrunched up in disgust.

"Better stick to boxers, old man," Roxy said to the defeated villain.

" _Enough already_!" Helmut shouted. "It's humiliating enough to lose to a bunch of kids! So, what're you going to do with me _now_ , Lynch?"

The answer came soon enough as the next day there was a new photograph in Lynch's study, right next to the last photo he'd taken with Helmut, which was oddly symmetrical, given that both photos had a defeated Helmut hanging in a net as those that defeated him posed for the picture.

 _Next Day_

They were all gathered in what Grunge and Bobby both called the 'War Room', or what Roxy called the 'Creepy Room Niko Talked To Us In', but everybody else called the 'Briefing Room', not that it actually had a title or anything. Harry had asked to speak with everybody, including Lynch. Anna had chores to finish up, and she'd never actually go out on missions, so she was exempt. Of more interesting note was that everybody, even Lynch and Harry, came dressed in their costumes.

"Thanks for coming," Harry started off. He'd foregone the goggles and gauntlets, so it was just him in the crimson and purple tunic uniform rather than _Thundercrack_ speaking to them. "Pleasantries done, down to business. Lynch and I have come to an... agreement about certain things."

"We're finally going on a mission?" Caitlin interrupted with an excited grin.

"You gonna stop naggin' us 'bout our mystic crap?" Grunge whined.

Taking a breath to prepare himself, Harry sat down at the end of the table, opposite Lynch. "Yes, and yes," he answered. "Before any of you say anything else, I've already got a mission for us. Remember that crazy bitch from the future, called herself the Traveller? Well, she escaped from prison last week. And we're going to put her back in there."

They all sat there for a moment or two, digesting that.

"What changed your mind?" Sarah asked.

"You all _finally_ showed me that you can actually control your mystic talents," he said. "Taking down Helmut, while not easy, could've been done with just your Gen-Factors, and in spite of my reminding you all _about_ your mystic powers, the fact remains that you did use them and quite well and with no hesitation or lengthy thought-process. While using spells over your fists and Gen-Factor powers may never be your first instinct, it is clear that you all have enough control and knowledge to handle yourself in a magical environment. Which is why I was so hesitant about bringing you all along on any missions, or even going with you on some of Lynch's missions."

"Speaking of which," the retired Colonel spoke up, leaning forward from his end of the table, "the only reason that I haven't sent you all off on one, is because like Harry here, I was waiting for you to demonstrate that you were good enough. That you could actually _survive_ any mission that I sent you on. Helmut's attack had at least one good outcome as it demonstrated that you all will watch each others backs and be able to handle yourselves if I'm not there. The deal between Harry and myself was that until you all were ready to go with him on _his_ missions, he wouldn't be joining in on any of _my_ missions. Which automatically meant that _none_ of you would be going, as has been made abundantly clear to me."

"He's our leader," Caitlin shrugged as that was answer enough for her.

"And we trust him a lot more than we do you," Roxy added. "Sorry, Mr. L."

"Not a problem, Roxy," Lynch replied, leaning back in his chair. "In that respect, Harry is much like his grandfather. You've all found your leader, someone who'll get you through the worst to come, who will get you through hell and make it out the other side alive. I can respect that. I'll honor that. I'm here for logistical and strategic support. I won't ask that you follow me blindly, but I _do_ have more experience than most of you. Please feel free to use that."

"We'll be sure to do that, John," Harry acknowledged. "Thank you."

"Thanks, Mister Lynch," Caitlin nodded.

"Thanks," said Sarah.

"Yeah, thanks," Bobby smirked.

"Ditto," Grunge and Roxy both said together.

"Back on topic," Harry pulled out his wand and cast a few quick silent spells, activating the holographic projection system and pulling up the appropriate files. For some reason, Stark-Tech could handle wizard spells without any overload. WayneTech hardware was unquestionably more durable, and LCorp had more advanced technology in general, but Stark-Tech computers and software were almost like they'd been designed to be used around supernatural energies. Go figure.

"Traveller, aka Nadia Breslov," he began as the holographic representation of her file from the MIA appeared. "Complete psychopath. Clinically and biologically speaking at that. By all appearances, either she was bred for it, or something was done to her to make her that way. Regardless, she is dangerous and cannot be reasoned with like a normal person. From our last encounter, we know she was looking for some guy that goes by the name of Langston. Probably another time traveler, like she is, but short of causing a major historical event targeted specifically at either one of them, I'm not sure what good that does us. The only good news is that her armor and weapons were all confiscated and secured away, so when she escaped she didn't have any of her advanced technology to call upon. At least... none that we know of. General consensus is that if she did have some kind of hidden future tech still on her, she would've used it long before this point. Means of her escape are still unclear."

"What part of this requires our mystic talents?" Sarah asked.

"She was being held in a magical prison," Harry answered straight forward. "Even though she herself is not a magical, leaving her to the regular authorities is just begging for her to walk right out of there. The wizards holding her managed to keep her locked up for a solid three months. Once we figure out exactly how she escaped, they should be able to hold onto her for good."

"Can't we just send her back to her own time?" Caitlin asked. "Let the authorities of whatever future she's from deal with her?"

"Authorities that apparently trained or transformed her into a psychopath, gave her plasma-weapons, and a personal time machine that protects her from any alterations done to the timeline?" Harry 'innocently' asked.

"I withdraw the question," the redhead timidly retracted.

"I got a question?" Grunge said, actually raising his hand.

Suspecting what that might be, and knowing he'd regret it, Harry went ahead and gestured for the short man to speak up.

"Other than to pound on this crazy chick, again, which I'm totally down with—what exactly do you need the rest of us for?" he asked.

"To find her in the first place, actually," Harry replied. "I've got some stuff being sent over. The very last things that Ms. Breslov was in contact with as a matter of fact. Between Sarah and Roxy, I was hoping to get _some_ idea of where she might've gone next. Meanwhile, you, Caitlin and I would try and figure out _how_ she managed to escape in the first place."

"Whoa? Me? I mean, I know I'm awesome and stuff, and totally down with the fighting and the surfing and stuff, but... I'm not exactly Houdini. I don't _do_ prison breaks!" Grunge protested.

"But you are the closest thing this team has to a ward-expert," Harry pointed out. "Which is what she would've had to get past. Wizard prisons aren't all that big on cameras, laser grids or modern features. They still use walls, cages and guards, but for everything else to raise an alarm, they depend on one of three things; magical creatures, magic wards, or a magical environment. In the case of the latter, just so you know, those prisons only tend to have _one_ prisoner. If you _really_ want to know, please ask."

The way he phrased that last sentence had them all second-guessing and so silence reigned at the table.

"Bobby, after myself, is our most offensive magical," Harry continued when it was clear nobody would ask. "So on the off chance that the Traveller somehow becomes aware of either Roxy or Sarah tracking her, he needs to be on hand to put her on the defensive until the rest of us can get back. I'm the ICW rep, so I'll be needed to even get into the prison, Kat's magic is all geared towards defense, so she may pick up on something that I'd normally miss. And again, Grunge, you really are the closest thing we've got to a wards specialist. Rox, Sarah, I don't know what to ask for really. I'm hoping that you can scry for her, or otherwise divine her location, but..." he trailed off and shrugged.

"I know a few different spells," Roxy shrugged. "Might work. It would give us an 'at-the-time' location, but if she's moving, or leaves soon after, wouldn't do us much good."

"If you have something of hers, then yes, I can scry for her," Sarah remarked. "Just... why is somebody, that uses future tech, considered a _mystic_ threat?"

"Because magic is the only thing that stopped her the last time," Harry then explained about his side of their fight with the Traveller.

 _M.A.C.U.S.A. Magical Penitentiary_

 _Florida Keys, FL_

The Maximum Security Wizard Prison for the continental United States was, interestingly enough, within a few miles of one of the mundane Maximum Security Prisons. Nautical miles that is. The _Magical Congress of the United States of America's_ Magical Penitentiary was located on one of the isolated islands known colloquially as the Florida Keys. It was heavily warded and had more than a few standard— _magical—_ protections on it, so no interstate bridge connected it to the mainland. In fact, without magical talents, one couldn't even _see_ the island from a distance, and it was abolished from any and all maps, digital or otherwise.

Primarily a prison for wizards, similar to Azkaban for the Brits, there was a lot of red tape to get through to even be permitted _access_ to its location, let alone what would be needed for a full and proper investigation. Though he was considered an international hero, and his status with the ICW, Harry still had to fill out an eye-watering amount of paperwork, in triplicate, _per person_ , before he, Caitlin and Grunge could step foot on the isolated island's shore. And again, wizard prison. Apparation and PortKeys and similar transportation were specifically blocked all around the island, extending several miles out to sea in all directions, and having a boat 'vanish' off the coast of US territorial waters would defeat the purpose of a secret magic prison. Therefore, the only way on and off of the island was via submarine. A wizard-enhanced submarine, but still.

For further security, the sub didn't actually dock with any part of the island, rather a specialized _'Bubble_ ' Charm was cast over visitors and then shot off towards a special receiving area. The sub would then turn around and return to the mainland, without even having crossed the outermost borders of the wards. When leaving, the sub would be signaled, and the same Bubble would be put over them and they'd be shot out to just inside of the ward line, the Bubble sinking to the bottom, where it would vanish within one hour if the sub failed to pick them up on time.

For the record, Caitlin paid close attention when the spell was cast the first time and was confident she'd be able to either keep the spell going, or cast it anew if it failed at any point when they left.

"I think I'm gonna be sick," Grunge gasped as he bent over, holding his knees, struggling to avoid throwing up.

"It wasn't that bad," Caitlin remarked, adjusting her 'witch' robes after their rather brusque arrival. Interestingly, they were more akin to some kind of Ren-Fair/Steampunk style dress rather than what most would consider 'robes' in today's society. She actually kind of liked it... or she would if she could get rid of the corset part of it at any rate.

"Just be grateful that Portkeys don't work here," Harry grumbled, fixing his own, more officious crimson robes and wand-concealing gauntlets. "Up you get, Edmund. We're here on official business after all."

"Oh, uh, _too right you are, guv'nuh-er_!" Grunge exclaimed in a horrid English accent.

"Don't _ever_ do that again," Harry glared at the shorter man, who properly cowered and silently nodded.

"Gentlemen," Caitlin interrupted. "Game faces on, so to speak."

Right before she'd spoken, the welcoming committee, such as it was, had arrived. Three guards, dressed much as any member of the American Department of Corrections, only with wands on their holsters rather than guns among other magical devices, alongside two people in robes, one of whom actually included a decorated bandoleer marking that individual as the defacto warden of the prison. Interestingly enough, though no one would dare to bring it up, the warden was a five-foot-five witch with white-blond hair, and the second person was a six-foot-plus Native American wizard with broad shoulders... and judging from both his attire and other accessories he sported, he was the warden's secretary, rather than second in command.

"Mister Potter," the warden greeted the ICW Hit-Wizard. "What an honor. I must say, nobody expected you to take such an... active interest in a case such as this. I'm the warden of the M.A.C.U.S.A. Magical Penitentiary, Wanda Walden. And this is my Personal Assistant, John Stormfeather. We are, of course, doing everything in our power to determine the weakness in our security and endeavoring to plug the leak as quickly as possible."

"Of that, I have no doubt, Madam Warden," Harry said, his English accent on full. Here, among his own people, so to speak, he didn't have to pretend or hide who he truly was. "And I'm not here to place blame or do anything to get anyone in trouble. I just need all the information that I can possibly get if I am to capture the escapee as soon as possible. How quickly can you show us her cell?"

"I'll take you there personally," the warden confirmed, then her face winced slightly. "However, there are security protocols in place that we must follow. I'm sure you understand..."

"Of course I do," Harry replied, already following along behind their escorts. "Like I said, I'm not here to cause anybody any trouble. And I'm not the sort of person that you _should_ compromise security for anyway. My team and I left our wands and other Foci back on the mainland in preparation for this. Nevertheless, warden, any expediting that could be done would be appreciated." With that, he gave the woman a significant look, with a brief side-glance towards Caitlin.

"Nothing to worry about there, Mister Potter," the older woman nodded in understanding. "We are all magicals here. And even if one of your companions _was_ a No-Mag, I can guarantee you that all of my people are the utmost professionals."

They passed a security troll, who just so happened to be in the middle of picking his rather large nose right as they went by. Pink tinged the warden's pale cheeks, while her 'secretary' glared at the uniformed beast, whipping him into shape.

"In my experience, Madam Warden," he said, "professionalism doesn't always equal up to capability. One of the laziest, most self-centered slobs that you could ever meet turned out to be one of the most loyal and dedicated soldiers I had at my side during the Defeat of the Death Eaters. I don't care how tidy the uniforms are kept, or how polite your people are on surprise inspections. I care that they can, and will do the jobs they've been hired to do, and that they do them better than anybody else in the country, let alone the world. _That_ is all that I care about."

"Yes, well..." the woman seemed to be at a loss. Fortunately, they'd arrived at the security check point.

What followed was typical screening, only with a 'ward portal' rather than a metal detector. Basically an archway utilizing the same principals as the Portal at Nine and Three Quarters, or even the Veil of Death, except instead of transporting you to another place, it focused all the energy of the wards onto one spot, so if any part of you, or your equipment wasn't registered in with the wards, well... let's just say that you wouldn't be walking out the other side of the arch. There was also a 'pat down', though done magically, which just meant a bunch of different summoning spells was shot at the lot of them and in this case nothing so much as fluttered their clothing, because they'd left everything behind. Besides, the three of them were all the weapons they'd need to defend themselves, and they were all confident about that.

Now in the prison proper, they quickly made their way, via escort, through the labyrinthine complex to the Traveller's former cell and the area where she spent most of her time. There was more security at each checkpoint and section, but that merely served to prove just how secure this prison was. Which, of course, made the question of how she escaped all the more pertinent.

"Anything yet, Grunge?" Harry asked as they made their way through the final set of wards between them and their destination.

Shaking his head, the suddenly serious Kekkaishi said, "Nah. Every barrier we've come up against is fully charged. No weaknesses. There might be a crack somewhere out of sight, but... the harmonics would be off, y'know? I can feel it. Everything is kosher with the wards, man."

"Kat?" Harry prompted.

The tall redhead took a long, calculating look at the cell block they were now in, and especially Nadia's cell in particular. "I don't see how she could have just walked out of here. Even if she used magic, which I seriously doubt at this point, there is no route to the outside, and every way in and out of each cell block is heavily guarded. Even if the extra guards are a new measure in response to her escape, I'm assuming there's always at least one on duty at each checkpoint?" She asked this of the warden directly.

"Two," came the quick reply. "Every checkpoint has a minimum of two guards, one on either side of the ward portals. I've doubled the guards in light of this... incident."

"Caitlin, Edmund," Harry told them, "Stay here and see if you can figure anything out from her cell itself. Where is her armor? Her possessions? I want to see that now."

"John can show you," the warden indicated her Native American shadow. "Most of her armor was confiscated and held by the MIA. The power pack, weapons, and what was identified as the device that allowed her time travel. The rest was impounded and put with the majority of our prisoners' personal effects. John, please escort Mr. Potter to the Closet. I'll remain here with the rest of Mr. Potter's team."

"Yes, Madam Warden," he acknowledged and lead Harry back out of the cell block.

"Let me know when you guys find something," Harry said in parting.

"Sure thing, dude," Grunge called after him, while Caitlin remained focused on studying the structure around them. There was something... off, about the dimensions of this place, but she just couldn't put her finger on it.

"So," the warden spoke up, trying to make conversation by all appearances, "how long have you been working with Mister Potter? He's quite famous, you know."

"Harry?" Grunge blurted out, "Nah, we're old friends by now. Known him, what? Almost a full year now, Kat?"

"About that," the redhead confirmed distractedly.

"Course, we've been in a few scrapes with him," Grunge went on to say, "but this is the first time he's _let us_ help him out with one of his cases. Apparently we weren't ' _good enough_ ' to help him out before." He held up his fingers to make very sarcastic air quotes.

"I thought that the ICW never assigned _teams_ of Hit-Wizards to cases like this," the warden went on to say. "Hit-Wizard teams are normally only formed when dealing with high-level criminals that have never been caught before. Usually for the ones that never _will_ be caught, if you catch my meaning."

Frowning, as she understood what the warden was saying all too well, Caitlin mostly ignored her as she entered the Traveller's cell directly, keeping one hand on the wall at all times. There was something...

Grunge, on the other hand, had no compunctions about 'flirting' with a semi-attractive older woman, which is how he saw the conversation from the start. "Well, we're not just any team. We're like, the foremost experts in our fields. Take me for example. I just so happen to be one of the highest level, non-affiliated, kekkaishi around. That's right. If it has anything to do with any kind of magic barrier, I am the man."

"Oh? That's... surprising," the warden said, sounding more confused than impressed.

Sensing that, Grunge tried to change topics slightly. "Uh, Kat here, she's like this super-impressive sorceress, or something. Say, uh, Kat? What kinda magic do you use again?"

Rolling her eyes, Caitlin answered from inside the cell, too distracted by her analysis to really consider the consequences, "All of them, Grunge. My magic specializes in protection and defensive magics, but I can use everything from wizardry, witchcraft, and general magic to sorcery, magecraft and chi magic. Something is wrong in here."

Interrupted from her encroaching accusations, the warden rushed forward and asked, "What is it?"

"I'm not sure," Caitlin confessed. "I may need to see one or two other cells to be sure, but..." She walked over to the wardrobe in the corner of the ten by ten by ten cell and tapped on it, "Is this supposed to be here?"

At the same time, Harry was making his own discoveries as he looked over the Traveller's personal effects. In particular, the parts of her armor/costume that were left behind. It was all blue or indigo of various shades.

"This is not her armor," he declared with a glare.

"I'm sorry, sir?" John asked, confused.

'The Closet' was mostly self-explanatory, it was the area, segregated and just as guarded as all the other areas, where all of the personal property of the numerous prisoners was kept. Sometimes, that included wands and other foci, mostly it just meant old clothes and knickknacks. The warden's secretary, John Stormfeather and Harry were the only people in the warehouse-like room, looking over the contents of the wooden crate holding the Traveller's armor. Of course, magic was involved, so the crate itself was no bigger than a typical empty apple-crate. Didn't change the fact that it held the _wrong armor_ though.

"This," he held up the bluish 'breast-plate' and an indigo-hued gauntlet in either hand. "It's the wrong armor. It's not even the same _color_ , let alone anything else about it. What are you people trying to pull here?" Harry demanded, facing 'John' full-on.

"... I'm not sure I understand what you're implying, sir?" the massive Native American wizard retorted.

Harry closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose, trying to massage out the tension he felt forming there. "Was the Traveller ever even _at_ this facility?"

"Yes sir, she was," the secretary replied, holding forth a file folder. "This is the transcript and documentation of her transfer to this facility from the MIA."

"..." Harry frowned as he accepted the folder and opened it, took one look at the picture on the inside, cursed, and _ran_ back to Caitlin and Grunge at the escapee's cell, not bothering wasting any time on cursing.

Meanwhile, inside the cell, the warden was looking at the contents of the escaped prisoner's accommodations, possibly for the first time ever, because the woman was clearly surprised to see a full-sized dressing wardrobe in there, when the entire place should have been a cube, with maybe a single slab that 'grew' out of the wall for a bed when it was Lights Out, and a hole in the corner for expelling waste. Caitlin saw the warden's reaction and reacted herself, by _punching_ the wardrobe and knocking it to the furthest point inside the cell away from the door. To her, as much as anyone else's, but mostly her's, absolute shock, the wardrobe did _not_ explode in a shower of splinters, rather the sound of a meaty fist hitting a meatier wall and a groan of pain came from the no-longer-a-wardrobe wardrobe.

There was a brief blur, and an off-color unarmored version of Nadia Breslov appeared where the flying wardrobe had been moments before. 'She' was rubbing a _bruised_ cheek, but otherwise showed no signs of discomfort.

"That was almost impressive, primitive," 'Nadia' said. "How did you see through my masking technology? Primitives and fossils, such as yourselves are too stupid to figure it out on your own."

The voice was spot on. The condescending tone, and even the words were almost exactly what Fairchild might've expected the Traveller to say upon seeing the time-lost villain again. She even looked exactly like her. There was, however, one or two things that really stood out that told the redheaded amazon that this was _not_ Nadia Breslov, aka the Traveller. One, the violent harpy had been about as subtle as a brick to the face. It wasn't in her nature to 'hide' or use 'masking technology', even if she did actually have it, which was exceedingly unlikely. Two, while she looked exactly like the pictures Caitlin had seen of the woman in Harry's files, the woman beneath the purple and violet armor, her coloring was just a shade off from the same woman she'd fought in Oregon all those months ago. Mostly in her skin tone and hair, and while that _could_ be explained away by her incarceration, typically that was in being paler, or a darker blond... not with bluish skin and chlorine-dye-job-green hair.

Plus, despite the whole now-has-pupils-rather-than-whited-out-eyes thing, there was no look of madness and uncontrolled rage in her eyes like the last time Fairchild had seen her. This, was _not_ the same woman.

Fortunately, at about the same moment that this changeling had revealed 'herself', Harry arrived... by appearing out of thin air without a sound. He then punched the fake Nadia in the solar plexus and pinched the nape of her neck, and the creature crumbled in his hands, reverting to a thorny green-brown skeleton-thing that Fairchild had no clue as to what it was. The warden, apparently did, as she screamed and scrambled back out of the room. Harry quickly dragged Caitlin out after her, mere moments before the room was once again magically sealed.

"What the hell?!" Fairchild screamed. "Harry, what _is that_?" she pointed.

"In layman's terms?" he frowned. "A changeling. In actuality, a spriggan. Judging from its color-blindness, and shape of its wings there, I'd say it is a Central American Spriggan, native to Costa Rica. Those further north have more jagged wingtips, and there are no spriggans to be found south of Panama. They call themselves something else, obviously, not to mention _their_ color blindness is total, not just mixing up shades of blue and red. They are magical creatures that can shapeshift. Question is, why is this one pretending to be an escaped prisoner."

"Better question would be if the Traveller was ever a prisoner here at all," she mused, as they made their way to the exit point, following after the warden.

"..." Harry opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it, as he realized she had a point. "I'll make some calls once we're back on the mainland. Hopefully Roxy and Sarah have had better luck."

 _Lynch Villa_

 _Sunnydale, CA_

"Any luck?" Bobby asked his teammates as they stepped back inside from the beach where the pair had been trying to scry for their adversary, out from under the influence of the house's wards apparently.

"Define luck," Roxy scowled.

"Apparently," Sarah answered, "whoever last wore that garment that Harry got for us is actually _still in_ the prison that they're off visiting right now. Fortunately, I remembered that Kat had kept some of that wiring from the Traveller's suit, and we used that to try and locate her."

"Turns out she doesn't exist anymore," Roxy grumbled, plopping down on the sofa with a bag of snacks. "And yet she does. It's this whole paradox thing going on. Good news is, we can confirm that she's on the Continental United States. Bad news is, we can't narrow it down any further than that. She could be in New York City, or right next door, and everywhere inbetween, same results either way."

"Have we heard from the others yet?" Sarah asked, ignoring her morose teammate's mood for the moment. Bobby shook his head.

"Not since they called early in the morning, saying they were leaving for the prison," he replied. "Harry did warn us that they wouldn't be able to reach us until they were back on the mainland anyway, so..."

The phone rang.

"Maybe that's him now," Bobby raced over and picked up the receiver. "Hello—"

"Hey," Harry's voice came over the line. "It's me. Any luck yet?"

"Nah," Bobby sighed. "We were actually hoping that you'd have gotten something more to go off of. Apparently whoever was wearing that piece of evidence you got for the girls, they're still in that same prison."

"Yeah," he could hear the annoyance and anger from his team leader through the phone. "Turns out the Traveller was never incarcerated in the first place. They put a shapeshifter in her place. Have you found _anything_ at all?"

"Well," he said, walking back into the room with Roxy and Sarah, "Sarah had the bright idea to use some of the wiring that Kat kept from that hi-tech suit of hers. But Roxy says that the results are too inconclusive. All they can say for certain is that she's somewhere on the Continental United States."

"..." Bobby frowned at the uneasy silence that answered this statement, and he soon understood why when Harry asked, in a scared tone, "Bobby, did they mean within the borders of the US... or within the borders of the _Hellmouth_?"

"Uh... Dunno, let me check," he pulled the phone away and asked the two scryers, "Hey, Harry wants to know if that last spell of yours means he was anywhere within the borders of the US, or within the borders of the Hellmouth?"

They both froze and simultaneous expressions of wide-eyed fear and realization crossed their faces.

"Um, I'm going to say, the latter, Harry," Bobby said. Right after that, there was the sound of an explosion from outside somewhere. "How quickly can you guys get back here?!"

"We're on our way!" Harry shouted and then the line disconnected.

The three mystic gen-actives stood there, staring at one another, until another explosion rocked the neighborhood. Eyes wide, they made a unanimous decision, voiced by Bobby, Burnout saying out loud, "Maybe we should, you know, get outside before whatever that is wrecks the house or whatever?"

Fortunately, in anticipation of trouble, all three of them were already in their uniforms, and all three of them were the 'flyers' of the team, so they quickly took to the skies and had a birds-eye view of the situation.

The Traveller had found them.

And she'd brought friends.

 _Sunnydale Outskirts_

He'd broken all sorts of rules just to get them here in time, and he feared they would _still_ be too late. For one thing, the Warden and her people wouldn't just 'let them leave', not without some kind of quarantine debriefing thing that would pretty much guarantee the rest of his team being killed. Or worse, captured and taken by the people they were on the run from. He was also pretty sure that if he'd allowed them to be held at the prison for any longer than he had, they would have found themselves with _permanent_ visitor passes, to coin a phrase.

As it was, Harry found himself throwing around as much weight as his reputation, badge, and position as an international celebrity known for defeating the worst Dark Lord in Europe's history, to get them to the exit portal. From there, he just had Fairchild and Grunge both use their combined abilities to recreate the protective shield that would allow them to survive the trip through the water, and then _he_ got them to the surface and then beyond the reach of the wards. From there he'd Disapparated them the rest of the way back to the Mainland, where he again used his role as an ICW Hit-Wizard to commission an immediate Portkey back to Sunnydale.

He knew the basic spell-work, but the finer points still eluded him. Given his current emotional state, they could just as easily end up in the villa's living room as they could in the demon-infested catacombs beneath the city, or even on the other side of the planet from the Hellmouth. As it was, the professional Portkey-maker could only get them to the very edge of the Hellmouth's influence, which is to say just outside the city limits.

"Harry, stop!" Caitlin ordered, holding her friend and team leader by the shoulder to keep him from running off. "Just... wait a minute, would you? If you run yourself to exhaustion, then you'll be no good to us in the actual fight, if there is one! Geez, look at you! You ran us along the ocean floor and then swam us to the surface before doing that teleporting trick of yours, and then ran us all the way to a back-alley magic shop in downtown Miami, fifty _miles_ from where we'd landed... Harry, just... rest for a minute. Regain your strength. Grunge and I will get us to the Villa."

"Yeah, uh, I'm not sure we've gotta worry about that," Grunge spoke up, pointing towards the beach side of town. They looked, and could see smoke rising into the late afternoon sky.

"Sorry Kat," Harry said, shrugging off her hand. "Duty calls."

Before she could stop him, he'd Accelerated and was running off to scout what was going on. He knew he was running on empty as it was, but something inside him would not let him rest. Not yet.

As it turns out, he soon found out, he probably should have listened to his teammate.

The fires, as results of explosions, were from a gang of _horgath_ demons, Asian-looking humanoids that could breath fire, as well as what looked to be members of the Scourge with skin-wrapped rotting demon corpses walking around with bladed weapons. And there, at the head, was the crazy blond in purple armor, shooting out plasma blasts like they were going out of style, Nadia Breslov, the Traveller. How the _hell_ she got mixed up with demons, after working alone and calling _him_ a fossil, he had no clue, but it was clear she needed to be stopped.

Remembering all too well the last time he'd gotten 'too close' to her and her time-travel-armor, Harry kept his distance and tried to work his way to the Villa and join up with the rest of his team. Before he could get there, however, everything around him staggered, jumping forward in time, or rather... unfreezing in time. It was only after this that he felt the hunger pangs.

Maybe, he thought to himself as he snapped back to regular, slow, time, he should have taken Kat's advice and eaten something?

The demons noticed him immediately and pounced the moment after.

Yeah, definitely should've taken Kat's advice.

 _Lynch Villa_ ( _aka the battleground_ )

Back near the edge of town, Caitlin was cursing as Harry vanished before their eyes. Knowing that every moment passing he was further and further away, she turned to her only remaining teammate and snarled at him, "Grunge! We've got to get after him! He could get killed! Now! Are you going to help, or am I just going to have to throw you back home and then jump after you, or are you going to help?"

"Help! I'm definitely going to help! I choose the second one!" the shorter man shouted, holding up his hands in surrender.

"Good," she growled, glowering down at him. "Now, do you have a way to get us back home quick enough, or do we try my idea?"

"Uh..." he gulped, mind racing, and then one particular night-time adventure in Japan came to mind. "I... _might_ have an idea. But I'm going to hate it."

"I'm all ears," she crossed her arms.

"You know the kekkai spell, right?" he confirmed. "Hoi, Jouso, Ketsu?"

She nodded and silently demonstrated by forming a single green-glowing cube with a wave of her fingers. He nodded in return, then quickly formed his own red-glowing cube, forced to use the incantation, about six or seven feet in the air, about the size of a generic crate. Then he jumped up and landed feet-first upon it. Looking back, he nodded, then formed another cube a further distance away and jumped across the distance even as the first began to dissolved.

Quickly catching on, Caitlin jumped as high as she could, and then only when she was on the downward arc did she raise her fingers and form a kekkai to catch herself. She jumped and did the same again, always making sure to head in the direction of the fighting. Further below her, Grunge doubled his pace, forming and dispelling kekkais close enough that he could just run across them rather than having to jump and leap as Caitlin was doing. Using this method, the two remaining members of Gen13 were soon falling down toward their home and the battlefield surrounding it.

The only good news that they could see of the situation was that the streets were remarkably empty, so it was just the gang of ugly monsters and the three flying (and two platforming) Gen-Actives on the streets. There was plenty of bad news to go around, starting with the fact that the monsters had an unconscious Harry in their grasp! And they were taking him straight to the Traveller!

Like Hell!

Caitlin jumped one final time, but she didn't bother constructing a kekkai to stop her fall. Rather, she angled herself so that she was falling fist-first right at the purple-armored blond's head!

"Hey BITCH!" she screamed as her fist landed at the villain went flying. "GET OFF MY LAWN!"

"Really, Kat?" Grunge shook his head, disappointed. "Get off the lawn? What are you, eighty?"

Roxy's eyes flashed white for just a moment, a moment in which something became abundantly clear to her. She flew over and used her gravity powers to stop all of the fire-breathers in their tracks, the rest of the demons being strong enough to ignore the excess weight dragging them down. When the two groups were clearly separated, she shouted over to Bobby.

"Burnout!" she screamed. "Leave the Kung-Fu-Dragon-wannabes alone! They can control fire, same as you! The rest are all yours! Rainmaker! Light those flame-suckers up!"

Each of her fellow flyers understood what she was saying, and both moved to opposite ends of the street, targeting one group each. Sarah held her hands out to the side and raised her face to the heavens and began to chant in a mixture of her native language mixed with certain original-Latin phrases. The skies darkened with heavy rainclouds. Bobby shot off a plasma burst between the horgath and Scourge demons marking a scorched line in the street. He then fired off a series of handsigns and his own original-Latin phrases, runes appearing in flame all along the scorch line. To finish it off, he quickly boxed the Scourge demons in, trailing a line of scorched earth and glowing flame runes. Then he held his hands above him and called out in a language that humans had no say in inventing.

Sarah cast down both hands, triggering her magically-augmented Amp-Bands while simultaneously completing the spell she'd cast. Lightning _poured_ down like rain from both her hands and the skies, landing only upon those she'd designated as targets, namely the horgath demons.

Bobby held a giant fireball in one hand, a small gift from the Spirit of Fire that he had called upon, fueled and enhanced by his own powers, and threw it down into the center of the area the Scourge monsters were trapped withing. The flame, which had the potential to ignite the atmosphere and burn down the whole town, never left the confines of the scorch marks that he'd laid down, though the flames did reach rather high, he made sure the heat never got any further past him, and if anything helped to fuel the rain that was beginning to fall even now thanks to Rainmaker's spell.

Down on the ground, the small handful of monsters not caught by the wholesale slaughter brought about by Gen13, took off, leaving behind the pitiful human that had appeared in their midst, aka Thundercrack. Grunge was quick to get to him, while Fairchild went after Traveller.

"This time, you're going to prison, and you're staying there!" the redhead promised, holding the psychopath up by the throat.

The white-eyed blond grinned through her bloodied teeth, and replied, "Sorry, cavegirl, I've got other plans." Then she unleashed a point-blank plasma blast to Fairchild's face.

Protection magic or not, there is no denying basic physics. As strong and resistant to damage as she was, the young mystic had no way to counter the raw force being directed at her. She was knocked back and away from her adversary, forced to let go. And while she was back up and little more than bruised within seconds, she was still blasted over fifty feet away. Distance enough that she couldn't close it fast enough to prevent the Traveller from attacking her other teammates.

"Ah!" she screamed in delight, aiming at Harry and Grunge. " _There's_ the little fossil that bested me before! I'm going to enjoy this!" She fired a single-handed plasma blast at Harry's prone form.

" _Ketsu_!" Grunge called, holding his pointer and middle fingers out even as the pulse of magic traced the outline and the kekkai formed as fast as the crazy lady's energy attack. He grimaced, but breathed a sigh of relief when the energy trickled out and failed to penetrate his barrier.

"Learned some new tricks, have you?" the psychopath cackled, absentmindedly knocking Fairchild back with another energy blast, this one aimed at her feet so she was knocked away in an overhead arc. "Well, thanks to my new benefactor, _so have I_!" She brought both her forearms together and the tech there connected and reformed into a much larger blaster, one clearly capable of dishing out a great deal more punishment.

Gulping, Grunge did the only thing he could do. He reached down to his material-laden belt and used his powers to shift to platinum, before reforming the kekkai handsign with his right hand and intoned anew, " _Hoi! Jousu! KETSU!_ "

Counting the existing red cube barrier already around him and Harry, a total of _five_ kekkai appeared, one inside the other, around the vulnerable members of Gen13. At the precise moment that the Five-Barrier-Kekkai completed, Traveller fired the full-powered Plasma Blast at them. It splashed against the outermost cube, cracked, and punched through within a second. It hit the next, cracked, broke through, and then again, though it had taken at least two seconds for it to do so. Grunge was definitely feeling the strain now.

The foot-wide energy beam hit the fourth kekkai, splashed against it for another three full seconds before cracking, the cracks growing and deepening for another two full seconds before finally punching through with only a few inches of energy bleed-through coming through. It stopped against the innermost barrier and it wasn't until it had stopped completely that he noticed the Traveller's weapon had run out of energy. He quickly reformed the broken barriers with but a thought, just in case she tried to hit him again, but judging from the way her backpack-thing was smoking and she was scowling at her separate-once-again arm blasters, that wasn't an option for her.

Fortunately for the team, before she could regain her energy or fix her weapons, the rest of Gen13 arrived and laid into the villain. She tried to blast them away, but Fairchild had learned her lesson, and cast diffusing spells around herself and the rest of the team, making the Traveller's tactic of knocking them back all but useless.

Freefall held the woman in place with her own localized gravity field, while Rainmaker adjusted the windspeed around her so she couldn't catch her breath, and Burnout made sure her equipment _stayed_ overheated. Then Fairchild walked right up to the woman, smirked, and punched her in the face as hard as she could. It was too much for the time traveling villain's personal forcefield, and the woman was knocked out.

When Harry came too, only a few minutes later, to the smell of Anna's cooking no less, he found himself in the company of a rather smug Gen13, and a naked and trussed up supervillain. Well, mostly naked. Her armor and weapons and the suit she'd had on beneath it all was removed, so she was just in a old pair of underwear the gang had lying around.

Taking one look at their smug faces, the captured villain, and the armor (which incidentally, he noted, had magic-infused runes inscribed upon it), Harry Potter just sighed and said, "Fine. Fine, fine, _fine_! We'll start going on missions. Twist my arm, why don't you!"

They all smiled. Grunge and Roxy high-fived each other. Caitlin came up and hugged the green-eyed wizard, before handing him one of his snack bars to eat.

 _End **Issue 02**_


End file.
